Lehigh Football Nation

We break down the Colgate game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. The updated weather report out of Hamilton is that the snow showers are supposed to end by Saturday morning. Gametime should be 38 or 39  degrees with gusts of wind up to 20 mph. On paper, this should be a good thing for the home team. Colgate is not in control of their championship and playoff destiny by some sort of fluke.  Their young team tested themselves early, going 0-3 against three tough teams in Navy, New Hampshire and Yale, managing to outlast Holy Cross in a critical Patriot League game that could have deep-sixed their season, and then won the rest of the Patriot League games in front of them, including a Fordham team that had dominated most of the teams on their schedule.

A year ago, two Patriot League schools accustomed to competing for championships instead were merely competing for pride. Colgate and Lehigh used to circle each others' names on the calendar back in February.  That's because more often than not, the outcome of that game had been critical in determining the Patriot League championship, the status of an autobid to the FCS playoffs, or both. Last season, though, for the first time in a long time, there were no championship or postseason implications on the line. On Saturday, for both the Mountain Hawks and Raiders, the "good old days" will be back. In February, with both schools coming off of uncharacteristic under-.500 records, it was not intrinsically obvious that the game on November 10 in Hamilton, New York would once again have a championship on the line. Yet here we are, with snow somewhere in the forecast, and a game with a 1:00 PM kickoff, with a likely on-field temperature of a brisk 37 degre

If you'd like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below. It was a crazy week no matter how you look at it, with four Top Ten teams falling from the ranks. But none was more shocking than 3-5 Mercer upsetting 6-2 Chattanooga , 17-14. The Bears, who only resumed football three years ago, have only offered football scholarships over the last two years, which makes the upset just that much more stunning of a team that was considered the prohibitive favorite from the SoCon this season. Mercer's three wins came against non-scholarship Stetson, under-scholarshipped Austin Peay, and winless East Tennessee State, themselves in their first season resuming football. The Bears' first win against a fully-funded school symbolized the craziness of last weekend's scores.

Going into last weekend, most people thought that Holy Cross might pose a problem for the Mountain Hawks defensively. The Crusader defense had shut out two opponents, contributing to wins over Lafayette two weeks ago, 42-0, and a CAA team, Albany, 37-0. How would Lehigh's offensive line do against Holy Cross' defensive front? Once the dust had settled on Saturday, the answer was: "just fine, thanks for asking." The Mountain Hawks did an awful lot of things right on offense last week, jumping out to a 41-10 halftime lead, carving out 543 offensive yards and executing 83 offensive plays.  But the foundation for that offensive explosion came from a vastly improved performance on the offensive line.

From the first two plays of the game, the Mountain Hawks seemed like they were going to dictate the terms of the rest of their 2015 season. It started with a slicing kickoff return from freshman KR Mike Gies , who saw some huge holes and got things started with a 39 yard return. The very next play freshman QB Brad Mayes , again looking more like a senior than an underclassman, found senior WR Derek Knott who lost his defender on a double move, and then turned on the afterburners for a 61 yard touchdown. It was that sort of half, and that sort of day for the Mountain Hawks, who put the pedal on the gas and didn't let up until they had secured a very satisfying victory.