Lehigh Football Nation

The media in the run-up to the Wagner game has been more upbeat than one might think considering the Mountain Hawks' 0-4 start. That's not to say that head coach Andy Coen is at all happy with how things have started, but his answers to this week's media questions were not what some fans may have expected. “I’m disappointed, I’m not going to lie,” he told Keith Groller of The Morning Call . “But again, this is a funny game. It’s never easy. It’s hard to win a game. It really is. At times last year we made it look really, really easy. Right now, we’re making it look really hard.” On Lehigh Sports Central this week, he said he felt like Lehigh was more competitive against Penn than they were against Yale. "We just continue to make mistakes," Coen said.  "We got the ball first, and turned the ball away.. we've got to get away from all of that stuff, and start playing better football."

(Photo Credit: The Morning Call) Going to practice this Wednesday, I wondered how things were going with the Mountain Hawks this spring. You never really know what to expect until you go, and on a surprisingly chilly evening, I arrived up at Lehigh's practice fields. A lot of times at practice you hear jeremiads from the coaching staff on "spirited competition" and competing for positions.  But you don't always see it on the practice field. On Wednesday, though, it was there.  I saw it. Maybe it's a product of a lot of players knowing where they fit on the team, and that's certainly what is my impression in regards to the Lehigh offense. When you have returning all-Patriot League players at running back, wide receiver, and the offensive line, that's one level of comfort.  When you have a returning quarterback that started three games, including an FCS playoff game, and led an 63-35 win over Yale with 524 yards passing, that's yet anothe...

Anyone at all worried that it's just a wee bit too quiet from Lewisburg?  I am. The narratives coming out of Bethlehem this week - emphatically, me included - are ones of possible Patriot League championships and how the offense is "clicking" and has been very, very good. That's not usually a very good recipe for a big game for the home side, especially since word out of the Bucknell camp is very, very quiet, even though the Bison still are very much alive in the conversation of winning the Patriot League title and making Lehigh sit at home Thanksgiving weekend. Last week, Bucknell traveled to the No. 9 team in the country, Charleston Southern , and proceeded to put up a very good fight in a game that didn't affect Bucknell's title chances one way or another.   Though the final tally was 49-28, Bucs, the Bison didn't go away quietly against Charleston Southern's triple-option attack, staying within a touchdown most of the way until the home tea...