Archive For September 28, 2018

2018 Bye Week TV Viewing Guide for Lehigh Fans

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2018 Bye Week TV Viewing Guide for Lehigh Fans

Are you like me – not all that sure of what to do this weekend now that there’s no Lehigh football to watch?

Fortunately, there’s loads of college football game to watch – there are games on Friday and Saturday to enjoy to scout out Lehigh’s upcoming opponents – and they don’t even impinge on College Football Gameday at Happy Valley, either.

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2018 Week 4, Penn: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

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2018 Week 4, Penn: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

(Photo Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer)

It’s time to go full nerd and do a full-blown breakdown of the Penn Quakers.

Penn’s game notes were out in good time, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, thankfully, still does a pretty good job in covering the Quakers in an independent way.  Both were invaluable for my analysis.

Unusually, Lehigh faces Penn this time around in a game that is not the Quakers’ season opener.  In prior years that made it tricky for the Mountain Hawks to sometimes get a full sense of what head coach Ray Priore might be doing, because there would be no true game film to study, only practice film and, if they’re lucky, an accurate two-deep.

This year, though, Penn has already had their first game, playing Bucknell in a game which they won 34-17.  It was a strange contest, basically won in the first five minutes thanks to 17 points donated to the Quakers via two Bison turnovers and a blocked punt.  Both teams would only put up 17 points the rest of the way each.

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2018 Week 4, Penn: Weather Report and Getting Your Tailgate Ready (Including Burger and Drink of the Week)

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2018 Week 4, Penn: Weather Report and Getting Your Tailgate Ready (Including Burger and Drink of the Week)

This week, Lehigh makes the short trip down to Franklin Field in Pennsylvania to take on the Quakers of Penn.

Kickoff time is at 3:00 PM and if you can’t make it to the game, the game is available though a pay service called ESPN+. 

This isn’t the exact same thing as ESPN the station. 

It works basically the way ESPN3 does, except that it requires a monthly subscription of $4.99 per month (though last I heard there was the availability of a free trial subscription available).  ESPN+ also carries a lot of college football games during the course of the season (including all the Ivy League home games), so it might be worth your while.  (Replays of the game I believe are available on ESPN3 for free later.)

With a subscription, if you have a Roku box in your home, you can stream ESPN+ directly to your TV from there.  If you have the ESPN App on your phone and Chromecast, you can bring it up on your phone and push the “Cast” button to have it stream directly on your TV.  Or you can navigate here on your desktop in a Chrome browser and use the “Cast” button from there.

Of course that solution works even better when you pair it with the local radio broadcast, either off your old-fashioned radio, streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage and listening that way.  Matt Kerr, Mike Yadush and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday.

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2018 Week 3 Lehigh Players of the Week and Report Card: Navy

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2018 Week 3 Lehigh Players of the Week and Report Card: Navy

I’ve never done one of these before after Lehigh’s played an FBS opponent. 

That’s because the last FBS opponent Lehigh played was in 2003, when the Mountain Hawks lost to UConn 35-17.

The Lehigh Football Nation blog was in its first year of existence back in 2003, and undoubtedly I wrote about it – but it’s not currently in the archives here at Blogger, because I archived those first two years offline. 

What I can tell you about that UConn game was that Lehigh faced off against a future NFL player in QB Dan Orlovsky and that QB Chad Schwenk got hurt late in that game, which made it his final game in a Mountain Hawks uniform and effectively threw the rest of that season in some turmoil.

Fortunately turmoil doesn’t seem to be a part of the report card today.

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2018 Week 3, Navy: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

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2018 Week 3, Navy: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

(Photo Credit: Capital-Gazette)

It’s time to go full nerd and do a full-blown breakdown of the Navy Midshipmen.

I can’t tell you how many of these previews I’ve done where I get game notes late Friday evening, had to play games with Ivy League depth charts to try to divine game plans, and the like. 

Some schools Lehigh plays don’t have any local media anymore, so finding out more about the starting players and the like is extremely difficult.

Not so this week.  For the first time in 15 years, Lehigh plays an FBS team, but not just a regional school, say, from the Midwest – they play Navy, a school with national and international reach. 

Game notes were out early and were detailed.

The coverage of Navy football isn’t just from the local Capital-Gazettewhich continues, through tragedy, to be stellar – but from national media, too.  In fact their last two games – against Hawai’i and Memphis – were big-time affairs in the national world of college football.

There is no shortage of media about Navy football or Navy football players.  In that way specifically, it’s like a breath of fresh air.
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The Day When Pat Pazzetti Sunk The Navy

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The Day When Pat Pazzetti Sunk The Navy

Even at the time, legendary Lehigh QB Pat Pazzetti had a reputation for doing it all.

The Brown and White’s dynamic playmaker did a little of everything for the team. 

Back in the days when players went both ways and there weren’t designated specialists, Pazzetti not only was the quarterback, but he also kicked punts and returned kicks as well.

In 1912, after a 35-0 thrashing by national powerhouse Princeton and facing the prospect of playing Navy – who had gone 9-0-1 against Lehigh in their last ten games – things had to be looking bleak for the Brown and White’s season, even with a team with some national ambitions.

After all, Navy hadn’t lost a football game in three years’ time.
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2018 Week 3, Navy: Weather Report and Getting Your Tailgate Ready (Including Burger and Drink of the Week)

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2018 Week 3, Navy: Weather Report and Getting Your Tailgate Ready (Including Burger and Drink of the Week)

Game on.

Like me, you probably heard that Hurricane Florence was barreling down on the North Carolina coastline, and earlier in the week it looked like a historic rain event could have possibly caused Lehigh’s first meeting against an FBS opponent in 15 years to be delayed, or even cancelled.

Meetings were had, and the situation monitored, but over the last 24 hours it looks like, at least for Annapolis and the Maryland area, it will be spared the worst of the storm.

According to the Capital-Gazette, “if the latest forecast holds Hurricane Florence won’t present any problems for Anne Arundel County, but officials warn residents should remain vigilant for any changes in the storm’s track.”

The shorter version, for Lehigh fans, anyway: Game.   On.
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2018 Week 2 Lehigh Players of the Week And Report Card: Villnanova

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2018 Week 2 Lehigh Players of the Week And Report Card: Villnanova

It’s a lot less fun to go through the “Players of the Week” and report card after a loss, but it’s still got to be done. 

Last week’s somewhat humbling 31-9 defeat comes at a point of the season where it’s more of a learning experience than a death blow to the season, and also came against one of the very best teams in all of FCS.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see Villanova win the CAA this season.

In any event, here we go.
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2018 Week 2 Lehigh Players of the Week And Report Card: Villanova

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2018 Week 2 Lehigh Players of the Week And Report Card: Villanova

It’s a lot less fun to go through the “Players of the Week” and report card after a loss, but it’s still got to be done. 

Last week’s somewhat humbling 31-9 defeat comes at a point of the season where it’s more of a learning experience than a death blow to the season, and also came against one of the very best teams in all of FCS.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see Villanova win the CAA this season.

In any event, here we go.
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2018 Week 2, Villanova: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

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2018 Week 2, Villanova: Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction

(Photo Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer)

It’s time to go full nerd and do a full-blown breakdown of the Villanova Wildcats.

If there were any lingering doubts about how good No. 12 Villanova is, the Wildcats enter this game on a huge high, upsetting Temple of the AAC 19-17.

This isn’t the first time Villanova has faced Lehigh after playing an FBS opponent.

In 2016, the Wildcats traveled to Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, facing a Pitt team led by now-Pittsburgh Steeler RB James Conner on the ground.  The Wildcats fought pretty bravely in that game but eventually fell 28-7 to one of the more powerful teams of the ACC that season.

In the game against Lehigh the following week, won by Villanova 26-21, Lehigh was in the game until the very end, jumping to a 14-6 lead at halftime before the Wildcats got over their Pittsburgh hangover.

Down 21-20, head coach Andy Talley resorted to dinosaur ball, running almost every play until converting the final touchdown.  The rally, behind QB Nick Shafnisky and WR Troy Pelletier, fell about a yard short on a 4th and 10 in Villanova territory.
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