QUICK RECAP: Mountain Hawks Keep Championship And Playoff Hopes Alive With 34-21 Victory Over Holy Cross

The term "control of your playoff destiny" is thrown around a lot.

The 3-6 Mountain Hawks were in control of their destiny this weekend. Win against Holy Cross, and Lehigh will stay alive for no worse than a co-Patriot League Championship and possibly a ticket to the FCS Playoffs.

By the time the clock hit triple zero's, the Mountain Hawks did what they had to do, beating the Crusaders 34-21, and keeping destiny in their own hands with one more regular season game to go - the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry next weekend vs. Lafayette.

Junior RB Dominick Bragalone carried the offense on his back with 30 carries for 205 yards and 4 touchdowns, but he and the offense fed off the energy of some big Lehigh defensive and special teams plays. Once Lehigh went up 14-0, Holy Cross would never get any closer than a touchdown.

Lehigh's defense forced a 3-and-out early in the game, and then, after a bad snap, senior DE Tyler Cavenas blocked a punt of a scramble and set up the Lehigh offense on the 6 yard line. It took all of one play after that for Bragalone to bowl his way into the end zone for the Mountain Hawks' first score.

On Holy Cross' next drive, Cavenas would sack Pujals on a critical 3rd down, and Lehigh offense would score on their very next drive, methodically driving 8 plays and 81 yards for the Mountain Hawks' next score a 7 yard touchdown run.

In the 3rd quarter, up 14-7, Lehigh would convert two huge FGs sandwiched around a big 33 yard run by Bragalone. After a 13 play, 57 yard drive that chewed 5 minutes off the clock, junior PK Ed Mish nailed a 23 yard attempt to give Lehigh a two score lead that would hold up the rest of the way.

As Lehigh was racking up points, the defense was setting the table for the offense to keep pouring on the scoring. Bragalone's 3rd touchdown was set up on a turnover on downs made possible by a sack by junior LB Mark Walker, and a forced fumble by senior DE Harrison Johnson and recovered by junior DE Julian Lynn set up Mish's second FG, a 41 yarder that just cleared the uprights and put Lehigh up by 20.

QB Pete Pujals did have some great individual plays, and did everything he could in his final collegiate game to deliver the Crusaders the win, but Lehigh's defense was up to the challenge of containing him, limiting him to 66 net yards rushing, 18-36 passing, and 276 yards through the air. He would connect on two touchdown passes to WR Blaise Bell, and take one in himself late for a third score, but it wasn't nearly enough.

"Coming into this game, we knew this would be a really big challenge," head coach Andy Coen said afterwards. "Pujals is a dynamic player, but I really think the best thing today was our defense. They put together a tremendous plan, and they took away a lot of what Holy Cross wanted to do defensively."

With the win and Colgate's 27-0 win over Lafayette, Lehigh's path to no worse than a co-championship is clear: beat Lafayette in the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry this week, and the Mountain Hawks will be back-to-back Patriot League champions and will be practicing on Thanksgiving getting ready for the FCS playoffs.

All that stands in the way is Lafayette.

Tune in later tonight for more on today's big win.

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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