Lehigh 35, Bucknell 16, Final

Boy, does this one feel good.

Lehigh put up 35 points for the first time this year as the Mountain Hawks overcame some early mistakes to coast to a 35-16 victory over the Bison, continuing their twelve year winning streak over Bucknell and keeping their title hopes alive for another week.

After the offense was shut out last weekend, seeing the offense put up five honest touchdowns - and junior QB J.B. Clark going the distance and putting up numbers like 24 for 37, 327 yards, 1 passing TD, 1 rushing TD, and only one INT - gives this Lehigh fan some hope that maybe, just maybe, little ol' Lehigh may still have a chance in this Patriot League race thing.

Other highlights include freshman QB/RB Michael Colvin getting his first career TD, and freshman RB Zach Barket getting his first TD as well to go with his career-best 77 yard effort. And add freshman WR James Flynn getting three big catches - including one to convert an early fourth down conversion - three greenhorns were asked to step up like upperclassmen, and delivered. And sophomore WR Jake Drwal had a career day as well with 9 receptions for 124 yards.

The gang-tackling defense did let up their first points since the Harvard game, but they certainly did the job against Bucknell by only allowing one early TD and one late TD. Senior LB Troy Taylor led the charge with 7 tackles, and senior DL Stephen Brown also forced a fumble. Keeping the Bison to 74 yards rushing had to be a good achievement against this triple-option team.

And on the subject of youth, on special teams another freshman, freshman TE Jamel Haggins, took Lehigh's extra-point troubles and made a negative into a positive. After a missed extra point in on the first TD, the second was blocked - but Haggins on a heads-up play grabbed the ball and ran it in for the two point conversion. It was a play that gave Lehigh more confidence, and was called by coach Coen a "momentum shift."

There will be lots of time for "Sunday Words", hating the 'Gate this week, and analyzing some of the mistakes that Lehigh hasn't totally cleaned up yet (the kicking game and penalties leap to mind) . But now, it's time to enjoy this win to its fullest. Today, Lehigh's offense has shown a key sign of being more on track. So while there's also plenty of things to clean up for Gate week, right now it's time to revel in this a little bit. I think everyone needs it.

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....

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though? Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me? Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything. Everything. The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...

#TheRivalry Flashback: November 21st, 1987: Lehigh 17, Lafayette 10

Since becoming an undergrad at Lehigh back in the late 1980s, I first heard about the historic nature of the football team and "The Rivalry" through the stories that fellow students would share. I did not attend the final meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette at Taylor Stadium, which was the final time a football game would be played there. Those that did attend said that was that it was cold. "I remember it being one of the coldest games ever," Mark Redmann recollected, "with strong Northwesterly winds and the temperature hovering around 20. By the end of the game, the stands were half empty because most of the fans just couldn't take the cold. "Fortunately, several of my fraternity brothers snuck in flasks to help fend off the chill."

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