No. 7 UNH Plays Like Championship Contenders, Buries Lehigh, 45-27

UNH Athletics

It was not a good half of football.

"I'm disappointed with today's outcome," head coach Andy Coen said after the game. "We never gave ourselves a chance. UNH really jumped us from the get-go and were very physical. We did not tackle very well. They really controlled every aspect of the game through the half."

For Lehigh fans, it made for some tough viewing at the place they call the "Dungeon" on a rainy, grey afternoon in Durham, New Hampshire.

New Hampshire scored touchdown drives of 71, 74, 84, and 90 yards in the first half, converting some 2-point conversions for good measure, to coast to a 29-0 lead. They never looked back.

"We were victimized by too many big plays," Coen said. "We had opportunities to tackle guys in space and we didn't do it. I credit the UNH staff and their kids. They did a great job. They had a great plan against us."

It looked like Lehigh might compete with UNH early when senior FS Stephen Wilmington alertly came down with a pass that bounced off the receiver, setting the the Mountain Hawks with good field position.

But a fumble happened on the end of a reception, and UNH DE Cody Muller wrestled the ball away at the bottom of a pile at the UNH 29.

From there the Wildcat offense, dangerous even on an off day, started slicing through the Lehigh defense like cheese.

UNH TE Harold Spears got loose for a big 53 yard strike. WR R.J. Harris would explode through the line for a 15 yard touchdown run, his lineman shoving him into the end zone to finish the drive. And near the end of the half, QB Sean Goldrich would find WR Jimmy Giansante for a 30 yard catch.

Lehigh's offense, led by sophomore QB Nick Shafnisky, struggled to find a rhythm and had drive after drive stall just to see junior P Austin Devine trot out to punt the ball away. Devine had 8 punts for a 43.5 yard average on the afternoon.

In the second half, Lehigh competed hard, despite the lopsided score, but it was "a day late and a dollar short," Coen accurately noted.

Some bright spots in the second half were a beautiful jumped route by sophomore CB Brandon Leaks, an interception setting up one score.

Another was a strip and recovery from junior LB D.J. Bourgeois, who set up another.

Freshman WR Troy Pelletier also scored two TD receptions, late in the game, one from Shafnisky, the other from senior QB Matt McHale.

But they certainly didn't make the bus ride any more pleasant to Bethlehem after a tough defeat to one of the best FCS teams in the nation.

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

Lehigh Football Nation

Search This Blog