Lehigh Football Nation

  I really wanted the Tom Gilmore Era to work. I did not first meet Tom Gilmore when he was a fiery defensive coordinator for some of the best Lehigh teams in history, but I thoroughly enjoyed what he created.   His defense was the final piece of the puzzle in 2001 when the Mountain Hawks earned a first round game in the I-AA Playoffs, a 27-24 win over Hofstra that was one of one of my favorite all-time non-Lafayette wins in program history.   In that game, Lehigh fell behind 14-0 and lost their starting QB, but his defense, led by guys like LB Tom McGeoy, held them to 10 points the rest of the way and ended up winning the game in overtime - where, fittingly, the Mountain Hawks prevented the Pride from scoring. I did later meet Tom Gilmore in person after a rainy afternoon at Murray Goodman Stadium in 2005.  By then, he had taken over a program profoundly in trouble, the Holy Cross Crusaders, and he was in his second year at the helm. When he took over at H...

  BETHLEHEM, PA - It's amazing to contemplate that only two players on Lehigh's spring roster, both fifth-year seniors, experienced anything resembling a regular, fifteen practice, spring season. LB Nate Norris had played in 2017 as a freshman in head coach Andy Coen's final Championship season, mostly on special teams.  He took part in spring activities in 2018 and 2019, only a few months after head coach Tom Gilmore took over the program.   He was joined by rising sophomore TE Alex Snyder, who started a couple of games as a true freshman in Andy Coen's final season. And then nothing resembling a typical college football schedule was able to occur for the next three years. "It really is incredible that none of our players [except Nate and Alex] have gone through Spring Ball until now," head coach Tom Gilmore told me this week. "The pandemic hit everyone at the same time, but we were in a very unique stage with our program at that point.  Having just go...

  Early last Friday morning, Lehigh football began their spring practice as the sun came up.  In so doing, the Mountain Hawks started their long journey and preparation for the fall 2022 football season. When we last left Lehigh football, they were enjoying a three-game winning streak to end the 2021 season with an extremely satisfying 17-10 win over Lafayette, which was Tom Gilmore's first win over the Leopards as Lehigh's head coach. Since then, winter workouts have allowed the players to build up to the spring session and will allow Gilmore and his staff to build on their November success. Spring practice #️⃣1️⃣ : ✅ Got out there early and worked through the 🌫️. Full gallery: https://t.co/eSHkKTCjOT #GoLehigh | #beGREAT pic.twitter.com/Oa2MmV46HY — Lehigh Football (@LehighFootball) March 25, 2022 "So far, I really like the energy and enthusiasm the players are bringing to the field each day," head coach Tom Gilmore told me.  "There is a genuine appreciati...

Late last week I caught up with Lehigh head football coach Tom Gilmore to ask him some questions about the incoming class and the recruiting season in general.  Here's what he told me.

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....

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...

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 ...

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.

Every head football coach hates to use the word "rebuild" when it comes to their football team, but going into the 2019 Mountain Hawk football season, it was hard to avoid it. From the preseason conference call where Lehigh was picked to finish 5th in the league - a reflection on last season's 3-8 record and the 5-6 record that preceded it - the word "rebuild" seemed to hang over this team. “Over 40% of our team are first-year players,” Lehigh head Tom Gilmore said on that call.  “And we’re excited to see what some of these freshman can do to enhance our roster and push the upperclassmen to be the best version of themselves on the field.” To a fan base that had grown accustomed to the way freshly retired head coach Andy Coen handled preseasons, already there was a sense that under coach Gilmore, things were different. But there was also the sense that perhaps it would take a bit of time to get things to where the Mountain Hawks would be every year c...

This weekend, late into the wee hours on the East Coast, Lehigh faced a huge challenge in playing No. 4 ranked UC Davis in their home opener this weekend. The Aggies, looking every bit the No. 4 team in the nation, executed on offense at a very high level as they beat the Mountain Hawks 41-14 . We've all had a few days to catch up on our rest, get back on East Coast time, and think about where Lehigh is after their adventure out West.  So, where are we?

This weekend, Lehigh had a tough evening on the Main Line as the Mountain Hawks fell to Villanova 38-10 .  After jumping to a 3-0 lead, Villanova would go on 17-0 and 21-0 runs in between a Lehigh touchdown to make the evening a happy one for most of the 8,000 fans in attendance. Unlike last week, this wasn't one that got away - this was a more comprehensive loss.  Here's five thoughts I had after looking over the game last week.

(Photo Credit: Hannah Hally Photography ) I thought I'd do something a little bit different this year and post five thoughts I had on last week's game.  This weekend, Lehigh lost to St. Francis 14-13 at Murray Goodman Stadium , and no matter how you slice it it was a winnable game that was lost. Yet it wasn't all bitter aftertaste - there was a lot to like despite the disappointing outcome.

This weekend Lehigh's Brown/White Spring game will be happening at 11:00 AM at Murray Goodman Stadium.  Admission is free and it will be Lehigh Nation's first view of what the 2019 Lehigh Mountain Hawk football team will look like. This spring season has been unusual by Lehigh standards where there have generally been public releases as to how people are doing in regards to moving up and down the depth chart.  With the hiring of new head coach Tom Gilmore , this spring seems to be more about establishing "Gilmore fundamentals" as well as assessing the overall situation. “The most important thing we are hoping to accomplish in spring ball is to establish good fundamentals in all phases of the game while establishing great work habits,” he told me this week .  “We will install a modest amount of the schemes and try to build confidence in the base portions of the offense, defense and special teams.”

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.

It was clear that Holy Cross' 32-0 loss to Yale wasn't going to yield many highlights for their end-of-the-year DVD. “We just couldn’t string anything together,” head coach Tom Gilmore said after the loss . “They got us on our heels. They were executing some big plays and it snowballed. Yale kept the pressure on and it one of those days we couldn’t flip the momentum.” At 2-5, the Crusaders did, and still do, have a chance to win the Patriot League, if they win the rest of their games and Lafayette loses twice - certainly not an inconceivable notion. Even so, Holy Cross athletic director Nathan Pine sent shockwaves through the Patriot League this weekend when he called head coach Tom Gilmore and told him that he was being terminated immediately, with Brian Rock , the team's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, taking over in an interim basis. “Traditionally I’m not a proponent of a mid-season change,” Pine told Jen Toland of The Worcester Telegram-Gazet...

(Photo Credit: Jay Anderson/Worcester Telegram) It was a day where even when things went wrong they went right for the Mountain Hawks. It was early in the second quarter, deadlocked at 7.   Sophomore QB Brad Mayes , picked the starter as senior QB Nick Shanfisky would be the backup to let his injured leg continue to heal, would get a drive going with an 18 yard pass to junior WR Troy Pelletier .  Two plays later, sophomore RB Dominick Bragalone would run a counter play left, escape a few tackles, and surge for a 28 yard run into Holy Cross territory. You could feel some momentum building as Mayes would connect on a 4th and 7 to Pelletier to get into the Holy Cross red zone, and again when he would rifle a ball to junior WR Gatlin Casey over the middle.  There was even more when sophomore RB Micco Brisker would keep his legs moving - and his offensive line, pushing - until he reached the end zone. Up 13-7, on the extra point Shafnisky, who holds during...

We break down the Holy Cross game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. It's often said that preseason publications aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and almost unusable when the actual regular-season matchup comes around. And in the case of Holy Cross, that's especially apt. Much of the hype around the Crusaders centered around their star QB, unofficially anointed the best quarterback in the Patriot League, senior QB Peter Pujals .  Much of my writings about Holy Cross centered around what he can do, what he brings to the table, and what his weapons are. But a left ankle injury in the first half of the Dartmouth game didn't just sideline him for that contest - it sidelined him for the season, forcing his ankle in a boot and will almost certainly have him apply for a medical redshirt for next season - unless head coach Tom Gilmore decides, against the odds, to have Pujals play this weekend if he's healed up enough. That and ...

Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Florida.  South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia. No, this isn't a list of Power 5 opponents that are suddenly going to be hosting Lehigh and Holy Cross in football the next few years. It's a list of just a few of the many states across the country that will be carrying the TV broadcast of the Lehigh/Holy Cross clash. It's going to be airing on something called the American Sports Network, which isn't a network in the broadcast sense but more of a network in the Internet sense: a network of interconnected stations, some over-the-air broadcasts, some local cable stations, that will be carrying Lehigh football over their airwaves. If you live in PA, all you need to know is the game is going to air on CSN-Philly, CSN-MidAtlantic+, WHP-2 Harrisburg, WPNT-2 Pittsburgh, or WSWB-2 Wilkes-Barre.  If you live somewhere else in the lower 48 states, a full list of broadcast outlets can be found here . It adds to the tension of what is a...