Lehigh Football Nation

Happy holidays and hope everyone has a merry 2020 and beyond.  Here at LFN, we wanted to compile a post listing the best and most memorable victories in the 2010 decade as voted on by one superfan who's been doing this for a very long time. As the fine folks at Lehigh Sports remind us, the 2010s were particularly great from an aggregate standpoint.  A Lambert Cup-winning season (given to the best FCS team in the East), a 7-3 record against Lafayette, and a whole lot of individual achievements are just the tip of the iceberg. The 2010s were very good to us... 4️⃣ @PatriotLeagueFB titles 💍💍💍💍 2011 Lambert Cup 🏆 2️⃣l Playoff wins .595 winning percentage 42-18 PL Record 7️⃣-3️⃣ vs. Lafayette 1️⃣8️⃣ game PL winning streak 🔟 All-Americans 1️⃣ Walter Payton Award runner-up #GoLehigh pic.twitter.com/buLimC0nSX — Lehigh Football (@LehighFootball) December 31, 2019 But in this wonderful decade there were individual games that were things to celebrate as well....

Below, we're going to do a quick once-over of Lehigh's game notes and possible injuries, then we'll dive right into 5 things to look for with Sacred Heart, my Keys to the game, and the cherry on top will be my Fearless Prediction. You can read my College Sports Journal preview of #155, complete with TV and streaming information, here. Keith Groller of The Morning Call headlined his piece " Lehigh’s defense has been its best in years, but it hasn’t translated into a winning season ".  Additionally, Paul Reinhard of The Morning Call headline his preview " Lafayette football has more than just bragging rights on the line vs. Lehigh ". Lehigh's Davis Maxie (95) tackles St. Francis punter Ryan Oliver (33) after Oliver fumbled his punt attempt in the Mountain Hawks season opener at Goodman Stadium on Aug. 31. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call) Game Notes There is some good news and some bad news in the game notes . Last week, RB Rashawn Allen ...

LFN: So it must be interesting being back here coaching in The Rivalry.  Tom Gilmore: It is. I mean, you know, when you step back and you think this is the most played game in college football, that's pretty neat. And it's such a big rivalry. It's been around so long. The proximity is schools, the proximity of our alumni bases, it just makes this a special thing. And regardless of how the rest of the season goes, good or bad, or you always have that big game left at the end of a regular season, that's really special. No one else in our league has it. A lot of the Ivy League doesn't.  Only Harvard/Yale or Ohio State/Michigan, Cal/Stanford is anything like this. We have something really special here.  Adding to that is title implications.  Both teams have to hope that Holy Cross loses to Georgetown. But at the same time, if that does happen, if we win the game, we tie for the championship and if Lafayette wins the game, they win the championship. Having t...

LFN: Did you have a pretty busy class schedule this year? S Sam McCloskey:   I got here late today as well. Tuesday through Thursday is pretty busy. Monday and Friday, actually, I'll have class. LFN: What are you studying now?  And how has that been integrating with football? SMC: An MBA type of technical entrepreneurship. There's definitely a lot to it, a lot of hours.  So at times it's actually been tough, you know, kind of balancing football practice and whatnot. But it's completely different than undergrad programs, really hands on. I like it a lot.  We get to work on our own venture. So I'm trying to work on that and we'll see where that goes. LFN: Do you have anything lined up for the future? SMC:  Probably end up in construction or real estate, something like that. That's where my interest has been, you know, throughout college. So that's cool. LFN: How do you manage the Rivalry distractions?  What do you tell the younger player...

One of the nice things about having done this for long is that at my fingertips I can summon up the definitive account of the last five meetings of The Rivalry through my game recaps of the time.  Here's a quick summary of the last five times Lehigh faced off against Lafayette in the most important game of the season.  And heck - it's Throwback Thursday somewhere, right?

LFN: So your in your fifth year, you're and environmental science major. How's that? How's it been going along here for you? How has that worked out with integrating with football? DE Juwan Morrow:  There are a lot of labs. It's a lot of field trips and class time, going out and doing certain experiments, using certain tools, you know. So it's definitely a challenge to be able to incorporate that with football. But the professors in that department are accommodating and football is very understanding. And it's a blessing to be able to have people work so hard together to make things work for me.  LFN: Do you have any plans after graduation or do you know what your plans might be? JM: So hopefully that paired with my environmental policy masters degree, that makes me more marketable to be able to work somewhere in Philly. LFN: This season has been one of a great defensive turnaround.  JM: We took on a backbone role for the defense. I think it ...

There is something about Eastern Pennsylvania that keeps drawing people back. I see it all the time - from expats who move across the country, but still watch the Eagles on Sundays.  Once you've been to the Lehigh Valley, warts and all, it seems like some sort of gravitational pull yanks you back to the area.  You can live in the Yucatan, but a part of your heart remains in the Valley. It's a strange thing, too, because the Lehigh Valley has never been a paradise on earth.  Even from the times of the English and German Moravians setting the area in the 1600s, it's been a place of contrasts - the well-to-do living and working next to manual laborers.  The prosperity of Bethlehem and Easton ebbed and flowed, but what always was true was that both were cities that were a big mix of different types of hard-working people. Lehigh University reflected Bethlehem, a town built on iron and steel, a town that wanted to pretend that you could go from the foundry to the ...

You can read College Sports Journal's preview of the game here , and my mostly-football-free "Tailgate Report" here . Below, we're going to do a quick once-over of Lehigh's game notes and possible injuries, then we'll dive right into 5 things to look for with Sacred Heart, my Keys to the game, and the cherry on top will be my Fearless Prediction. Keith Groller of The Morning Call headlined his piece " Lehigh football tries to regroup at Sacred Heart with season slipping away ".  Part of the article talked about the frustration of last week's 20-10 loss to Bucknell . “We didn’t handle our business, but all you can do is learn from it and plan to fix it for the future,” senior WR Dev Bibbens said. “We need to win this game and get things turned around against a quality opponent. There’s always a lot to play for. Any time you have an opportunity to play a game on a Saturday, that’s a lot. We don’t take that opportunity lightl...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Campus Field this Saturday in Fairfiled, CT at noon. If you can't make it to the game, it's is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. The local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Jim Guzzo, and  Matt Markus  are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this is my preferred method to catch the game action. Streaming the audio i...

We're going to try something different this week.  No, don't worry, we'll still break down this week's game and everything, but we're just going to make it it quicker and a lot easier to read. You can read College Sports Journal's preview of the game here , and my mostly-football-free "Tailgate Report" here . Below, we're going to do a quick once-over of Lehigh's game notes and possible injuries, then we'll dive right into 5 things to look for with Bucknell, my Keys to the game, and the cherry on top will be my Fearless Prediction. I called this game a "Family Reunion", thanks to all the coaching links between Tom Gilmore, Dave Cecchini and the makeup of both coaching staffs, and in Keith Groller's preview of the game in The Morning Call , he and Gilmore went into even more detail. “It has been a long relationship,” Gilmore said of Cecchini. “I coached Dave’s younger brother, J.T., at Dartmouth in the ...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Christy Matthewson Stadium this Saturday in Lewisburg, PA at 1:00PM. If you can't make it to the game, it's is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. The local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Mike Yadush, and Steve Lomangino  are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this is my preferred method to catch the game action. S...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Murray Goodman Stadium this Saturday at 12:30PM. If you can't make it to the game, it's is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. The local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Mike Yadush, Tom Fallon and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday.  (I also am hearing that there is going to be a pair of special guests, quite possibly, during the pregame, whom I can't wait to hear from.) Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going...

We break down the Georgetown game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. You can read College Sports Journal's preview of the game here , and my mostly-football-free "Tailgate Report" here . I forgot in my "Tailgate Report" to do a look at Lehigh's game notes , so I'll do it here. To most fans, seeing QB Addison Shoup on top of the depth chart at quarterback was probably the biggest eye-opener as QB Tyler Monaco was the starter last week, and was in the game until the last couple of plays in overtime.  As of the time of this writing, although some people have assured that Monaco is well enough to go, the truth is he didn't practice the entirety of this week, so I would more characterize more as a "gametime decision" as to whether it is Monaco or Shoup under center.  It seems fair to say that Monaco will start and play if he's able. CB Marquis Wilson has struggled to get back to 100% from his inj...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Murray Goodman Stadium this Saturday at 12:30PM. If you can't make it to the game, the game is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. The local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Lance Haynes, Tom Fallon and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this is my preferred method to catch the game action. Streaming...

What a win! Really, it still feels pretty darned good a few days later - a 30-27 overtime win over Fordham that was a tremendous matchup between two very evenly-matched teams.  It was a win that resulted in a bunch of Patriot League Players of the Week awards ( WR Dev Bibbens, RB Zaythan Hill , and LB Keith Woetze l), and only Bucknell super-punter Alex Pechin prevented a clean sweep of the awards. Additionally, for his great statistical performance, Woetzel won national honors with STATS as defensive player of the week.  His 15 tackle, 13 solo stop, 4 sack performance was the first national award for a Lehigh player since RB Dom Bragalone earned one of those honors in 2017.  Woetzel is also the first Lehigh defensive player to win a major national award since STATS took over the award from the Sports Network. Here are three additional takeaways from the game.

One thing has remained remarkably consistent for the last six years - Fordham has had Lehigh's number. It hasn't mattered that Fordham has had Joe Moorhead, Andrew Breiner, or Joe Conlin , or whether Lehigh was gunning for a Patriot League title, or not - during that time, Fordham has done only one thing consistently, and that's beat Lehigh. Granted, during many of those years, Fordham has some all-time teams, with UConn transfer QB Michael Nebrich , current Arizona Cardinal RB Chase Edmonds , and a cast of terrific Patriot League players too numerous to mention.  But then again, during Lehigh's last Patriot League title year of 2017, fourth-string RB D'Angelo Palladino ran for almost 300 yards on the Mountain Hawk defense for a 45-35 win , something the Lehigh seniors remember all too painfully well. In a year of lowlights, last year's 43-14 loss to Fordham for head coach Joe Conlin's first win as Fordham head coach really stood out to ...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Jack Coffey Field in the Bronx, NY. Kickoff is at 1PM.  If you can't make it to the game, the game is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. Lehigh's local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. (In the Lehigh Valley, you can also catch the game on 94.7 FM).  Matt Kerr , Jim Guzzo and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this ...