LFN's Five Burning Questions Of Preseason Camp

It's almost here - the 2016 football season.

On August 8th, the Lehigh football team finished their offseason testing and officially started in with the incoming freshman class.

Head coach Andy Coen was very impressed with the 20 new faces of the incoming class.

"It's always a huge for the freshmen coming from high school to college but I think that group of kids did a really good job," he told LehighSports.com. "I was really impressed that we didn't have as many mental mistakes, especially the young guys," he continued. "That's always good to see. The guys are keeping their faces in the playbook, learning and trying to get better."

So what will Lehigh Nation be looking at during the 2015 preseason?

Let's jump right in.

1. Defensive crispness. Coach Coen always looks at competition at all positions at preseason camp, but it's on defense where the expectations of turnaround will be highest and the competition fiercest. With senior LB Colton Caslow leading the way, intensity shouldn't be a problem on this defense, but execution and attention to detail will be.

It is Year 3 of defensive coordinator Jor Bottiglieri's 3-3-5 defense, and unfamiliarity won't be an excuse anymore as to improvement on defense. While "crispness" isn't exactly an easily measured stat, but it's the little things that I'll be looking at during the preseason.

2. Defensive pressure. Key to making the 3-3-5 work for Lehigh will be improved pressure from the defensive front, and the improvement of players like junior DE Tyler Cavenas and senior LB Pierce Ripanti this offseason. In the spring, there was barely enough defensive linemen to hold a scrimmage, so it was difficult to judge the improvement of this unit. This August, it will be interesting to see who rotates in on the front and how the pass rush in general will look.

3. Tight-End/H-Back Sets. On offense, much returns, especially senior QB Nick Shafnisky, junior WR Troy Pelletier, and sophomore RB Dominick Bragalone, as well as a slew of other important skill players. One area where there will be new starters is TE, though, with a combination of senior TE Zach Bucklin, junior TE Drew Paulsen, junior TE Mike Baur, and others. One of these guys will start, and the others will find themselves on the field in different situations - but how?

4. Offensive Line Depth. Much of the freshman coming in this season are on the offensive line, and are immediately into the mix in terms of competition for spots on the two-deep and special teams rosters. There are some intriguing options as freshmen, for example, freshman OL Alex Motley. Which freshmen will progress in camp, and which ones will be seeing time vs. Monmouth?

5. Who's Punting? One of the more underreported areas of competition for the Mountain Hawks this fall is with two freshmen and the starting punter spot: freshman P Austin Henning and freshman P/K Oliver Clowes. One of these two guys will be the starting punter for Monmouth - which one will it be?

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....

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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