Lehigh Football Nation

Spring football is going along well, even when the temperature outside seems more like a mid-summers' day than early April.  Viewed in that light, it seems pretty apropos that Lehigh's theme for this year involves the heat - or, as head coach Andy Coen explained to Keith Groller of the Morning Call , 212 degrees: 'That's the boiling point of water,'' Coen said. ''The thought is that you want to heat up and when you get to 212 degrees, you boil and you can do some special things. I think they picked up a good theme because we have been close the last couple of years. We have been playing at 210, 211 degrees in a lot of games. This year we need to get to 212.'' It's been an incredibly busy month for Lehigh athletics - two NCAA tournament appearances, an EIWA and NCAA Wrestling championship, and another appearance on CBS College Sports this weekend - this time for men's lacrosse, where they head up to Hamilton to engage in their own sprin...

(Graphic Credit: RushTheCourt.Net) Before I get back to football, there's one more pressing matter I need to address before the eyes of America turn back to Major League baseball and the endless speculation if Butler head basketball coach Brad Stevens will be heading to fill Holy Cross' sudden vacancy at head coach now that Sean Kearney was terminated after one disappointing year .  (Either that, or he's going to depose ex-Lehigh head basketball coach Billy Taylor at Ball State if David Letterman has his way. ) No, it's the hottest off-the-court topic in the land: whether the heavily-expected merger of the NIT and NCAA Tournament will make March Madness, worse or worser.  Is 64 perfect, and 96 terrible?  Will it mean there will be no more Butlers , as New York Daily News writer Dan Weiss opined?  Is it only about the money , as CBS Sports ' Dan Ratto thinks? Ratto is correct - for what it's worth - since part of it is certainly creating more games to ...

(Photo Credit: Yahoo! Sports/Getty Images) A piece of history was made last night in Indianapolis.  Duke won a basketball game 61-59 over a tiny school in Indianapolis, and but for the curse of some unkind rims go Butler into the history of the NCAA tournament. The Bulldogs lost the game, but by playing the way they did, as strong as they did, with not one but two chances to still win the game at the end, they won the respect of the entire country.  The world knows they were two rims away from doing what was unthinkable going into the tournament: really, really win the whole damned thing. It's a bit of a cliche to say that "there are no losers out here tonight", as Jim Nantz said in his broadcast last night, in a game that will be right up there with Villanova in 1985 and North Carolina State in 1983 as one of the greatest championship games of all time.  But it's true.  At no time did anyone watching that game think Duke ran away with this.  Not one perso...

(Photo Credit: Joe Gill/The Easton Express-Times) So here I am, about four blog postings behind.  I haven't talked about women's basketball, and the gap between the Lehigh's and the UConn's (who blew out Baylor by 20 points last night). I haven't talked wrestling - where I have a recap of the NCAA championships that I've been sitting on for two weeks. And I haven't talked football, where Lehigh is in the middle of their spring season with a boatload of optimism for next year. So what am I going to talk about instead?  The McNabb trade : which leads me to my first Nixon quote on this blog.  Like it or not, Philly fans won't have McNabb to kick around anymore.  (more)

It used to be - once upon a time - that the spring was my quiet season, when I didn't really comment that much about sports.  But with Lehigh making it into both the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournament, it's been a lot more compelling to follow all the action and keep a close eye on the proceedings.  (Even though my Villanova/Temple Final four pick seems, in retrospect, crazier than picking Lehigh to upset Kansas in the first round. ) Usually by this time of the tournament, my NCAA pools are busted wide open, the out-of-control athletics departments at, say, North Carolina or Kentucky are looking at winning the national championship, and I'm busy breaking down the offensive and defensive spring rosters for Lehigh football. But a funny thing happened on the way to inevitability: Butler won me over.  Maybe it's because I'm the fan of a "smaller conference", or maybe it's because I'm genetically programmed to root for the underd...

With spring football starting in earnest this past weekend, the first look, inevitably, is at the offense .  The defense, like the offense, is loaded with returning lettermen and also filled with a bunch of players that were starters last year. But when you look closer at what Lehigh needs to replace on defense, it seems like the hole is much greater than just the counting of players on the two-deep that were seniors. Three of the top five tacklers on the team need to be replaced - who accounted for 24 1/2 tackles for loss in 2009.  One is a potential NFL player, senior LB Matt Cohen , and two more, senior SS Jesse Sanchez and senior DT B.J. Benning , who were the emotional core of last year's stifling defense.  It feels like a lot more than just a lot of bodies to replace. (more)

If it's late March - and Lehigh doesn't have any more wrestlers making all-American status , or the men's or women's basketball teams aren't playing in the NCAA tournament - that must mean it's time for spring football, where Lehigh coaches start to figure out their gameplans for 2010. While last season's 4-7 record was nothing to write home about - well, okay, the awesome victory over Lafayette certainly was - what we did learn about this team last year is that they have been battlers over the course of last season.  Things got tough, and it wasn't fun for a long stretch of the season, but ultimately their hard work did, at least, pay off in the biggest game of all. With the core of the offense returning, along with some key defensive pieces, that battlers' mentality matters.  We know that these guys work hard.  But with a new offensive coordinator in town and a possible NFL player graduating ( senior LB Matt Cohen ), there still are plenty ...