Five Burning Questions For Lehigh Heading Into Preseason Camp

There's a pretty good chance that senior WR Troy Pelletier, who made the Patriot League's preseason all-Conference team and is on the Walter Payton Award watch list to start the year, will be the starter in the season opener vs. Villanova.

It's also not a headline that junior RB Dominick Bragalone, also on the Patriot League's preseason all-Conference team, is likely to -shocker! - be a starter on September 2nd.

But that doesn't mean that there still aren't plenty of questions as the Mountain Hawks enter into their fall training camp for fans to think about.

Who steps in at LB? Probably the biggest question mark for the Mountain Hawks comes in at linebacker, where Lehigh sees the graduation of three seniors, LB Colton Caslow, LB Pierce Ripanti, and LB Evan Harvey in that unit. Coach Coen had good words about the play of sophomore LB Keith Woetzel in spring, and there's some names in this unit that have seen some action, but which names will emerge on the the two-deep against Villanova as the starters?
What will we see from senior DB Quentin Jones, and how will that affect the two-deep in the secondary? After suffering a scary injury last season vs. Yale, Quentin appears to be itching to get back into the game this season. If he steps into the role now that CB Brandon Leaks has graduated, the Mountain Hawks might boast a deep secondary with a lot of experience. But is he back all the way, and if he still needs time to recover, who else might fill that role?
Will senior DE Tyler Cavenas step into a star role? Following Tyler the past three years has been a lot of fun as he's developed his pass rush and evolved into a solid player along Lehigh's defensive line, and it's exciting to see what he might be able to do in the upcoming season. Even though Lehigh's front is deep and has a lot of experience, can he take the next step in his game and become an every-game dominant player?
Who will step up as slot receiver? In Lehigh's three-receiver set, there are two spots that are penciled in to start the season: that of senior WR Troy Pelletier and senior WR Gatlin Casey. But the slot last season had two valuable seniors, WR Trevor Soccaras and WR Derek Knott, play a pivotal role in the offense as well, both of whom require new athletes to step up. After the spring, some candidates emerged, but who will be atop the depth chart?
Who steps up in terms of leadership on offense and defense? Lehigh had four team captains last year: two who return this season, senior OL Zach Duffy and senior OL Brandon Short, and two other guys that were the heart and soul of this Lehigh team the last four years, QB Nick Shafnisky and LB Colton Caslow. Duffy and Short will unquestionably be leaders on this team in 2017, but assuming there will be two more captains, who might those leaders end up being?

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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