Skip to main content

Lehigh's 2017 Recruitment Class Big on Championships and Big on Versatility

(Photo Credit: Dan Gleiter/PennLive)

Head coach Andy Coen came into the conference room at Taylor Gym with a broad smile on his face - the type of face that comes from winning a Patriot League Championship last year, of course, but also the type of face that comes from a man quite happy with his incoming recruiting class.

The fifteen names in the incoming class, "with four extra guys to announce later [on]", Coen said, seemed to fill Lehigh's needs, the fifth consecutive year that Lehigh has been recruiting with the same type of  scholarships as the rest of FCS.

"We had to shore up some depth, we really had to get a little bit of everything," he said.  "We graduated a lot of guys in the secondary, so it was important to get a good group there this year, and I think we did that."

Four defensive backs were announced today as being a part of the incoming class, DB Divine Buckrham, DB Tre Cundiff, DB Tre Neal, and DB Jaylen Floyd.

"The four defensive backs are not only capable of being corners but can also play safety or potentially grow into our rover position," Coen explained in Lehigh's official release. "That's always good when you have kids who start out with the ability to be very versatile in our defense."

In fact, the theme for this entire incoming class could be one of versatility - versatile defensive backs, a versatile running back in RB Evan Chadbourn (a "triple threat type of guy", according to Andy), and even a versatile quarterback in QB Addison Shoup (who is listed as a pro-style quarterback but showed some running ability in his the highlight reel that Lehigh Athletics showed of all the recruits announced today).

"Addison is a very active quarterback," Coen said. "He has a strong arm and does a lot of different things with his feet. He's a little different from QB Nick Shafnisky as he's more of a pure passer than Nick but he's capable of beating defenses by throwing the ball and running with it."

It felt like the guys Andy announced today on offense and defense could be used in a variety of different roles, and that's just how he wanted it.


Coach Coen was extremely happy today with the quality of competition his incoming class played in at the high school level.

Powerful high school programs like St. Thomas Aquinas in Florida (DL Jason Dooling), State College High School in central Pennsylvania (LB Pete Haffner) and St. Joe's Prep in Philadelphia (OL Jackson Evans) were well represented.

"Developing relationships with high school coaches and getting them from very good programs is really important," coach Coen told me.  "Look at it this way, if you keep recruiting kids from St. Joe's Prep, it's going to be a lot easier to get other guys from St. Joe's Prep. Usually good high school players are the ones that become good college players. The ones that play at a high level and are on championship teams, those guys seem to understand better than others what it takes, the commitment you need to have to win a high school championship."

Areas where this years recruiting class seemed to be focused the most, depth-wise, is offensive line (OL Jackson Evans, OL Chistopher Fournier), defensive line (DL Jason Dooling, DL Jack Kircher), linebacker (LB Pete Haffner, LB Nate Norris), and wide receiver (WR Matt Jordan, Jorge Portorreal).  LS Jack Dean, too, gives needed depth at one of the more underrated positions on the football field, long snapper.

"It's important when you develop relationships with these coaches and their families," Coen explained. "The kids like seeing familiar faces from their team and have the opportunity to play alongside each other again. That's one way we gain inroads in some of these very strong programs."

On the highlight videos, what jumped out at me was QB Addison Shoup's passing ability, completing a bomb for a touchdown off of his back foot.  I also was impressed with WR Jorge Portorreal's speed, and how he escaped tackles a couple of times for some big plays.



Overall the class to me looks like a broad-based talented group that looks like they can come in and compete for time on the field, no easy feat on a team that just last year won the Patriot League Championship.  For Lehigh the last four years, it was a slow and steady climb back to the top of the league.  This group looks like it will fit in very well with that championship tradition.

DB Divine Buckrham, 6-0/180, Queens, N.Y./Kiski Prep
RB Evan Chadbourn, 5-11/180, Altoona, Pa./Bishop Guilfoyle
DB Tre Cundiff, 6-0/185, Somerville, N.J./Immaculata
LS Jack Dean, 6-2/185, Chatham, N.J./Chatham
DL Jason Dooling, 6-3/275, Sunrise, Fla./St. Thomas Aquinas
OL Jackson Evans, 6-3/300, Garnet Valley, Pa./St. Joseph's Prep
DB Jaylen Floyd, 5-9/175, Miramar, Fla./Miramar
OL Christopher Fournier, 6-4/275, Ottawa, Ont./Episcopal (Va.)
LB Pete Haffner, 6-0/210, State College, Pa./State College
WR Matt Jordan, 6-1/175, Beverly Hills, Mich./Brother Rice
DL Jack Kircher, 6-5/265, Norwalk, Conn./New Canaan
DB Tre Nea, 5-11/180, Harrisburg, Pa./Susquehanna Twp.
LB Nate Norris, 6-1/225, Chalfont, Pa./Central Bucks South
WR Jorge Portorreal, 5-9/170, Jersey City, N.J./St. Peter's Prep
QB Addison Shoup, 6-0/190, Marietta, Ga./Walton


OL Christopher Fournier (via Twitter)
DL Jack Kircher (Photo credit: Terry Dinan/New Caananite)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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....
43 comments
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a ma...
9 comments
Read more