Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: The Daily Princetonian ) It's very rare to be able to see a non-conference opponent on the football schedule and be able to compare them completely to your own team. Non-conference opponents, of course, are not teams from your own division which you are expected to be able to compare yourself against. Columbia's non-conference schedule going into their nationally-televised game against Lehigh consists of three games: one against Fordham, one against Monmouth, and one against Princeton. It means that Columbia head coach Pete Mangurian , and Lehigh head coach Andy Coen , will be very familiar with their opponents this week.  Not only will they be able to recall last year's game at Murray Goodman in terms of personnel, but they'll also be able to pull game film on three common opponents to get the tendencies of both teams. One thing that neither team will be to one another is a surprise.

The clock has ticked to 17 days left until the Mountain Hawks' season opener vs. Central Connecticut State. At N o. 17, we look at senior CB Courtney Jarvis  as our highlighted Lehigh football athlete today.

Last season, there was little drama on the defensive side of the ball going into the spring season. With all-Patriot League names like DT Sajjad Chagani, DE Tom Bianchi, LB Billy Boyko and CB Bryan Andrews on the roster, you knew that the squad was more in a mode to "tweak" rather than to "retool". This season sees not only these three position leaders graduate, but plenty more, making the defense much less experiences, and a much larger area of competition, than last season. “The defense needs to get better,” head coach Andy Coen said in this week's release . “They didn’t perform very well in our last scrimmage and our coaches have challenged them. We haven’t had a lot of live tackling because we’re in a tailback situation. Last week we got more into it, we scrimmaged, and we didn’t tackle very well. We have to improve upon that."

You can probably figure out who this week's LFN Players of the Week will be, but here they are for posterity: Offense:  Senior TE Alex Wojdowski (4 catches, 72 yards, 2 TDs, including the last two of the game) Defense: senior CB/PR Jarard "Main Man" Cribbs (7 tackles, 2 interceptions) and junior LB Mike Groome (11 tackles, 1 pass breakup) Special Teams : freshman DB Courtney Jarvis (4 kickoff returns 88 yards, stepping in very well after senior CB/KR John "Prez" Kennedy was banged up) Underclassman: sophomore QB Michael Colvin (10/14 passing for 128 yards, 37 yards rushing, 1 TD) Congratulations to the winners!