Hawk Squawk: Tom Bianchi

(Photo Credit: Baltimore Sun)

It still seems weird that, with all of Lehigh's offensive prowess from last season, their thrilling FCS playoff victory would some down to that rarest of scoring plays, a safety.

Yet there he was, senior DE Tom Bianchi, in position to give Lehigh a lead they wouldn't relinquish in their 40-38 shutout win - and he executed.

In my "Hawk Squawk" series, I talk with Tom about the safety, and the upcoming season.

LFN: Really, how many times did you replay that safety vs. Towson inside your head this offseason?

Tom Bianchi: I remember directly after the Towson game my friends and family were sending me links of videos to the game so I didn't even have to search for it online. But waking up the next morning after the game and re-watching it online multiple times on YouTube was an amazing feeling..I also have great action shots of the safety at home along with the newspaper articles.

[Ed. Note: As luck may have it, that YouTube clip is right here. All the highlights are, um, awesome, but BIanchi's deciding sack comes at 3:59 in the clip.]

LFN: How has camp been overall for you, and what are you working on in your individual game the most?

Tom: Camp overall for me has been a great experience. Being that it is my final year of college football, I really want to enjoy every moment I have left. But mostly during camp, I'm aiming to improve my game and sharpen my techniques. In the run game I'm working on holding the point better and keeping blockers off the linebackers, while also working at my speed and hand quickness in the pass game.

LFN: Has it been any different on the "D" line in your role with coach Kotulski gone, or has your role largely stayed the same?

Tom: With Coach Kotulski gone I believe my role has predominantly stayed the same. Coach Roberts and Coach Wilcher have maintained the basic defensive schemes we've done in the past with Kotulski, but only with some small changes.

LFN: Do you "D" lne guys have any friendly competitions with the other units?

Tom: Our "D" line competes with the "O" line every day at practice. We have 1-on-1's for 10 to 15 minutes mostly every day where we go up against each other and try to rush the quarterback. We take pride in our attitiude of being more athletic then offensive linemen in general, therefore the friendly competition benefits our team as a whole by making our "O" line better while they are making us better.

LFN: Finally, how hard do you think it will be to win a third straight PL title?

Tom: I think because of our success in the past two years, similar to last year, we have a target on our back. Coach Coen talks to us about this a lot in our meetings. Myself and the group of seniors on our team are confident that this will only make us play better and more motivated as a group. But that's not our only motivation to win a 3rd Patriot League championship. We also don't want to be remembered as that group who couldn't put together a threepeat. I think our biggest opponet will be ourselves.

We need to play consistent physical and focused football, and winning a third straight Patriot League championship will be R.E.A.L.

[Ed. Note: R.E.A.L. is Lehigh's slogan for the 2012 season, which stands for Relentless Effort Achieves Legacy.]

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

UMass 21, Lafayette 14, halftime

Are you watching this game? UMass had this game under control until about 3 minutes in the second quarter, and then got an interception, converted for a TD. Then the Leopards forced a fumble off the return, and then converted THAT for a TD, making this a game. It's on CN8. You really should be watching this.

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

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