Lehigh Football Nation

It wasn't the prettiest of wins. But after a dominating defensive performance - and just enough offense in a 27-0 victory for Lehigh, their first win of the year - I will certainly take it, and I'm positive Lehigh head coach Andy Coen will take it, too. After the Lehigh defense opened the game by sticking the Hoyas to a three-and-out, it became very evident that the offensive gameplan would involve a whole lot of junior RB Jay Campbell , who bulled through for 12 yards in his first three carries of the game. But sophomore QB Chris Lum tossed an interception - sort-of an ill-advised pass into tight coverage, but the interception came from a tipped ball - which gave Georgetown plenty of hope that they could hang with the winless Mountain Hawks. But the defense would again stymie freshman QB Isaiah Kempf and the rest of the Hoya offense on their next drive. Junior CB Jarard Cribbs would then kick-started things with a 34 yard punt return that pumped life into the Mountain Ha...

(Photo courtesy Georgetown Athletics) ''If you look at the big picture, all of our goals are still intact. We haven't even started league play yet. If you look at the league, there hasn't really been a standout team so far. We've just got to take it a week at a time. Hopefully, we'll win the Patriot League and contend for a national championship in the playoffs.'' Who said this after a loss to Harvard as a lead-in to a game versus Georgetown - perhaps senior LB Matt Cohen , or senior LB Al Pierce ? Nope: it was WR Frankie "Playmaker" Trovato after an excruciating 35-33 loss to Harvard in 2006. In that game, a missed 2-point conversion would end up being the difference. That year - like this year - Lehigh started out in rough shape at 1-3. While the win was against Villanova (note: a Wildcat team that was nowhere near the quality of this year's Villanova squad), losses to Albany, Princeton and Harvard had Lehigh fans singing some seriou...

Some quick notes before we enter the preview of the Georgetown game. First of all, here are this week's LFN "Players of the Week": Offensive Hawk: Freshman QB Michael Colvin (career-high 74 yards rushing vs. Harvard, including a 55 yard scamper that set up Lehigh's first TD) Defensive Hawk (tie): Senior LB Al Pierce (10 tackles, 1 sacks, 2 QB hurries) and sophomore DB/LB Colin Newton (10 tackles, 1/2 sack, 2 pass break-ups) Special Teams Hawk: Sophomore P Alex Smith (6 punts, 39.8 yard average) This week, some more bad news came down the pike in a season filled with it: news from the Express-Times that senior DT Phil Winett and senior LB Heath Brickner are officially done for the year with their injuries , and senior LB Troy Taylor is questionable as well. It seems like eons ago that we were worrying whether Lehigh could play all their senior talent at linebacker; now we're wondering which underclassmen will be suiting up on Saturday. With the notable e...

(Photo courtesy Hofstra Athletics) Sometimes it doesn't make any sense. If you had one FCS game to go to this past weekend, you most certainly wouldn't have picked James Madison visiting Hofstra: you'd have gone to Villanova to see the No. 2-ranked Wildcats take on the No. 5-ranked William & Mary Tribe. Trouble is, had you chosen the better game on paper to watch, you would have seen a yawner - the excitement, incredibly, was in Hempstead, Long Island. (No really, was that the first time those words have ever appeared anywhere?) Every year there seems to be that senseless CAA upset - Rhode Island putting everything together to upset UMass, say, or Towson winning against Villanova. This year's first CAA upset came at Hofstra - the yes, the same Hofstra that struggled against Stony Brook and scored a grand total of 10 points against Richmond and FBS Western Michigan - where the Pride didn't fall against James Madison in a shock 24-17 upset . While in retrospec...

(Photo courtesy Kevin Mingora, The Morning Call ) Unsurprisingly, the press this week was not kind to the Mountain Hawks in the write-ups of their 28-14 loss to Harvard . The Morning Call has a photo gallery up from the game, of which this picture to my left featuring freshman QB Michael Colvin is a part. (There have been others this year from the Morning Call as well, but today was the first day I felt enterprising enough to post them.) Look soon for my photos to be posted to the Lehigh Football Nation Facebook page as well. If fans would like me to post them to Webshots as well I will do so, though I have been too bummed to post any so far this year. They're currently on my computer at home, waiting for me to get some time to upload them. Lehigh Athletics: Mountain Hawks Drop 28-14 Decision to Harvard "Obviously we're not happy to be 0-4," Mountain Hawks head coach Andy Coen said afterwards. "I thought sophomore QB Chris Lum did some nice things out the...

At some point this year - I forget exactly when - my thoughts turned to my "Sunday Word" column, and I realized that it could be misinterpreted. Initially modeled after the "Word" from The Colbert Report , it finally got through my thick skull that when you stick the word "Sunday" in front of it it becomes something different - in the right context, it can be religious in tone, as if I'm delivering a sermon. While I never intended it to become sermon-esque, I think, re-reading my "Words" for this year, that they have oddly veered into sermon-like territory. (Heck, last week I pitched a sermon for the Wildcat offense .) It doesn't help that my "Words" tend to be more on the serious side when Lehigh is losing, and at 0-4 the Mountain Hawks are inviting me deeper into the sermonizing aspect of my "Words" and less into whimsical wordplay on, say, weather or weird Swedish words nobody has ever heard of . Normally, I thin...