Archive For September 30, 2013
My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 9/23/2013 follows below the flip.
But first, by all means, enjoy this great shot of a big Top 25 game last week, McNeese State at Northern Iowa. (Photo Credit: Matthew Putney/The Waterloo Courier)
The picture tells the story of the game pretty well, as the Panthers in the UNI Dome took apart McNeese, 41-6. In my poll last week, both were Top 10 teams. Not this week, though I didn’t drop the Cowboys too far.
It is very, very easy to “respect” New Hampshire’s football program.
Sure, they have earned “respect” nationally for their incredible, sustained success on the field.
They’re known as the original FBS killers, making it a habit of knocking off teams like Rutgers and Northwestern well before Appalachian State famously knocked off Michigan, James Madison upended Virginia Tech, or, most recently, North Dakota State took it to Kansas State.
They’re also known perennially as a team in the FCS Top 25, inhabiting the rankings in some way for an incredible 130 weeks. In 2004, behind a third-string quarterback, QB Ricky Santos and his Wildcats beat Rutgers 35-24 and have been nationally-ranked ever since.
FBS nightmares, all those Top 25 appearances, and nine consecutive playoff appearances to go along with that give UNH mad “respect” with the wider FCS community, and also make for a thrilling opponent when they come to to town.
But they also have earned “respect” in another way, too. They’ve done so by building their success the right way, not compromising academics for all their athletic success.
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The 2013-2014 Lehigh Men’s Basketball season has officially commenced with the team just having begun practice, and the first game against the University of Minnesota is just about 5 weeks away. Change is never easy, but change is the one definite thing Lehigh fans will notice when the Mountain Hawks hit the court this season,…
(Photo Credit: Matt Smith/The Express-Times)
It’s pretty remarkable how routine it’s all getting.
To Lehigh watchers, this come-from-behind 34-27 victory resembled all the others. They’d seen this movie before.
Fall behind early, by double-digits if possible. Regroup. Mount a comeback. Make huge defensive stops. Win.
For the fourth straight game, Lehigh came from behind to win.
For the third time this season, Lehigh overcame a double-digit deficit to win.
It’s as if all of Lehigh Nation simply expects the Mountain Hawks to fall behind in the first half, and recover in time to win. You could feel it in the crowd of nearly 9,000 people at Murray Goodman Stadium. Amazingly, down by 16, the game never felt out of reach.
But this particular come-from-behind win was different in one very important respect.
In beating the 7th-ranked New Hampshire Wildcats this weekend, the Mountain Hawks finally got to silence the critics across the country saying they haven’t played anyone tough, can’t beat anyone tough, and won’t beat anyone tough.
They did. They can. And now, they have.
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It’s that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 5of the college football season. Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here?
This week’s FCS Top 20 Clash at Murray Goodman will by broadcast on Service Electric 2 with Mike Zambelli, Mike Yadush and Al DiCarlo as the announcers. For those not in the Lehigh Valley it will also be streamed for free on the Patriot League Network.
And I’ll be listenting to the pregame on ESPN 1230 and 1320 of the Lehigh Valley, too, with Tom Fallon, Matt Kerr and Matt Markus. That will also be live streamed here.
(Photo Credit: John Doyle/Foster’s Daily Democrat)
“I think we just need to get better coming out in the second half,” said UNH senior OL Seamus O’Neill in their win over Colgate two weeks ago. “We need to focus on playing the entire game. When we’re up on someone we need to keep our foot on the pedal.”
Sound somewhat familiar?
One of the more interesting subplots going into this weekend’s game is how New Hampshire, thus far the ultimate first-half team, does against Lehigh, thus far the ultimate second-half team.
What I truly like about the Wildcats, though, is their game notes, which are extensive and easy to get to. There’s also the matter of their video preview as well, which was equally as valuable to me.
Let’s break these guys down.
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(Photo Credit: John Huff/Foster’s Daily Democrat)
This weekend, it’s homecoming at Lehigh.
The pre-football festivities for homecoming start at in the middle of Friday, with a campus rally, followed by a dinner and a movie presentation.
The movie happens to be Monsters University, the hit Disney/Pixar movie from this summer where the heroes Mike and Sully flash back to their days at old Monster U., and we find out how they made it through their college years.
It so happens that there is an associated website with the release of the movie that is still up – complete with references to the Monsters U. athletic program and homecoming
“The MU faithful were put to the test last year, losing the conference championship with a “Hail Scary” pass from Fear Tech. But MU is back this year with an excellent new recruitment class — including three top-tier high school standouts: Bart Gates (quarterback), Uriah Pemberslime (fullback), and Harry Phiegel (wide receiver). The entire university community is buzzing with the prospect of Gates throwing to Phiegel for four years of touchdowns. “
In this entirely coincidental, fictionalized summary of the Monsters University football team is everything you need to know about this weekend’s game.
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(Photo Credit: Andrew Miller/Trenton Times)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Princeton game.
At today’s media session leading up to this weekend’s home game against New Hampshire, head coach Andy Coen announced the reinstatement of three of the four players suspended last week for violating team rules.
Below the flip are links and quotes about this from Michael LoRe and Keith Groller‘s articles.
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This summer, the Shades of 48 William & Mary Blog posted a series on the history of the moves of the CAA in the spring and summer of 2012.
In those great pieces, it was possible to come up with a timeline, which I attempted to do to some degree, to detail the shifting sands around the CAA, Big East, America East, NEC, and Patriot League.
One important element to this timeline, it now can be told, involved New Hampshire and the Patriot League.
Somewhere after April, 2012, when the CAA was on their way to losing Old Dominion to Conference USA and VCU and George Mason to the Atlantic 10, members of the Patriot League got on the phone to certain CAA schools to remind them that there was an open invitation to a certain academically-focused conference with headquarters in the Lehigh Valley should the need arise.
One of those schools was William and Mary. The other was New Hampshire.
And both schools took the invitation very seriously.
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