Skip to main content

Press Roundup: Lehigh Talks about "Learning Experience" Against Villanova

Rounding up the press on the game, Lehigh members focused on my "Sunday's Word" as it being a "learning experience" - but Keith Groller of the Morning Call also brings up the elephant in the room as well: scholarships.

[Programming note: I'm going to set up the voting for LFN's Player of the Week on the Facebook page. I'll keep the voting open until Thursday since I didn't get it up yesterday.]

First, though, the recaps:

Lehigh Athletics Release:
No. 3 Wildcats prove too much for Lehigh, 38-17


"I thought we made improvements over last week but certainly not enough to
win against the number-three team in the country," Lehigh head coach Andy
Coen said afterwards in the press conference. "But we did clean things up in
certain areas and now we have to keep moving forward. We have our bye week
coming up which will allow some of our banged up guys to get healthy and
we'll go back, watch the tape and continue to improve."

Morning Call:
Hawks better, but not winners

''It obviously wasn't the type of night we wanted to leave here with,'' said
Lehigh coach Andy Coen, whose team lost to Villanova for the third straight
year. ''We knew we were playing a good team and Villanova didn't disappoint us
in that regard.

''I thought our team improved over last week. That was a big goal for us, but you play to win and we didn't win, so we can't feel great about what happened.''

''With any loss, you're going to be down,'' said senior LB Matt Cohen who led the defense with eight tackles. ''We still have everything we want to accomplish ahead of us. It was important that we got better tonight and we did.''

Mountain Hawks focusing on positives after 0-2 start


''We were competitive and got much more physical play,'' coach Andy Coen said.
''Our kids battled. We fought hard in the trenches. We pass-protected pretty
well, giving up just one sack. We had some young guys in there up against a
seasoned defensive line and they held their own. So just the whole energy,
intensity and physical play was really improved.''


Lehigh used freshman QB Michael Colvin out of a Wildcat formation and the Morristown, N.J., product led the team in rushing with 26 yards on six carries.
''He's a talented runner,'' Coen said. ''He was a quarterback in high school, but he ran it a lot. He was a spread-type of quarterback and the whole offense was built around him. He's a good player. We'll probably use more of him. We had to be creative because we knew we'd struggle to run the ball against Villanova.''

''We're glad to have the bye week so we can get people back, and moving on from here, playing the people we're going to play, I think we've got a chance to win every game,'' Coen said. ''I really do.''


Express-Times:
Lehigh University football team loses to Villanova



Villanova (2-0), which upset Temple last week, had little trouble running the ball -- 310 yards on 47 carries -- and saw two players have career days. Quarterback Chris Whitney (11-for-16 for 106 yards, two TDs) racked up 130 yards on the ground and wide receiver Matt Szczur had 103.

"That's why this team is the No. 3 ranked (Football Sub-Division) team in the country," Coen said of Whitney. "They're a much better football team with him in there. Unfortunately, he was able to make some plays."

"We missed a lot of tackles last week but I thought we were better today," said senior LB Matt Cohen, who had a game-high eight tackles. "With any loss, if you're competitive in your nature, you're going to be down. It's going to be crucial in the off week we get healthy and keep pushing forward."

Brown & White:
Lehigh Falls in Defeat to Villanova 38-17


Junior K Tom Randazza expressed his disappointment in the loss and
reiterated the team's season goals.

"Obviously you hate to lose any game," Randazza said. "But we played a
lot better than we did in the first game. Our team goals are to win the league,
beat Lafayette and represent the league well in the playoffs. With the right
mindset and our continued effort, we can accomplish these goals and restore the
team's cohesiveness."

Junior QB J.B. Clark said he remains optimistic after the defeat.

"We now have a week off to recover and get some guys back who were
injured from camp," Clark said. "All we can do is learn from these games and
grow from them."


****

While the recaps make for tough, sobering reading, it's Keith Groller's blog posting that is sure to cause the most debate during the bye week.

Groller's Corner
Difference between scholarship and non-scholarship schools evident again

It was December, 2001 and Furman had just handed Lehigh its first loss of
the season in the second round of what was then the NCAA I-AA playoffs. The
score was 34-17 and there was plenty of talk about how the Paladins were bigger,
stronger and faster that day than the team The Morning Call was still referring
to as the Engineers.

Fast forward nearly eight years to Saturday night at Villanova Stadium and I was thinking that really nothing's changed since that day in Greenville, S.C.

The team playing Lehigh [this weekend] was bigger, faster and stronger. Lehigh battled hard, but simply wasn't as talented across the board as Villanova. And frankly, not many teams the Wildcats will play this year will
match up either.

And it becomes more and more apparent that Lehigh or any Patriot League program will not be able to match up with the Villanovas of the world in the postseason.

The Patriot League continues to get more and more evidence that if it wants to compete in the playoffs and for national titles, it has to make the move to scholarships.

As it is now, no Patriot League team is going to win a national title and one will be lucky to get to the second round.

Comments

ngineer said…
Groller is right. The way we have not been very competitive against the scholarship schools should be a clear signal to the League. IF they really want to say, with a straight face, that we want to be able to compete for a National Championship, then the money has to go where the mouth is. IF not, then accept what we are and create a confederacy with the Ivy so we can have an "IQ Bowl" the with their champ the first week in December. Could be a doubleheader with Army-Navy, the 'other' PL members. Time to do it or get off the pot.
Anonymous said…
i think it would be better if the patriot league teams drop out of the fcs and do what the Ivey league teams do. It would save alot of embarassment and the jerk school presidents could worry about carbonera studies.

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.