Archive For The “Brad Mayes” Category

QUICK RECAP: Up By 3, Lehigh Throws Out The Numbers And Finds A Way To Win, Beats Coglate 41-38

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QUICK RECAP: Up By 3, Lehigh Throws Out The Numbers And Finds A Way To Win, Beats Coglate 41-38

It was Colgate 28, Lehigh 14 as the first half was coming to a close.  The Mountain Hawks had the ball, but the pall over Lehigh fans everywhere was very evident – “here we go again,” most seemed to be thinking.

You couldn’t blame fans necessarily for thinking that way, of course.  The Mountain Hawks hadn’t found out yet this year how to pull out a game like this, and normally, a two-touchdown deficit to Colgate feels like a four-touchdown deficit, the way they run the ball and gradually crush the spirit of opposing teams.

Driving and scrambling – somewhat of a broken play – junior QB Brad Mayes found junior RB Dominick Bragalone downfield with a big 35 yard touchdown pass, cutting the deficit to 28-21.

And then, gradually, over the course of a half of football, Lehigh put mistakes behind them just as the uncharacteristic mistakes by Colgate seemed to mount.  One Colgate touchdown would be called back.  Then another.  And Lehigh would battle back to tie the game twice, fall behind by a field goal with 5 minutes to play, and then score the winning touchdown and get a game’s only turnover at the exact right time to preserve the win.

Somewhere, Al “Just Win, Baby” Davis was smiling.
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The Time Is Now: Lehigh Needs to Win A Football Game, Now

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The Time Is Now: Lehigh Needs to Win A Football Game, Now

You could say that following Lehigh football through the first five weeks has been an exercise in frustration.

That’s probably understating things quite a bit.

The season was not supposed to unfurl itself in this way.

The Mountain Hawks, rated in the Top 25 to start the season, remained that way after losing a tough game against Villanova, but then fell out of the national rankings when they followed that up with a loss to Monmouth.

And since, the team has just kept losing, each week more excruciating than the last.

Some Lehigh fans appear to think that the Mountain Hawks could turn things around and make a run at the Patriot League Championship in a world where the Patriot League is a combined 9-20 against out-of-conference foes.

I suppose it is still possible.

But to this fan, this goal can’t be the focus of the coming week.

Speaking as a fan, I feel the focus of all the players and coaches needs to be on one singular goal: how to win one, singular, football game.

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QUICK RECAP: Winless Lehigh Drops Another At Wagner, Falls 37-20 to go 0-5

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QUICK RECAP: Winless Lehigh Drops Another At Wagner, Falls 37-20 to go 0-5

In their last 3 football games against Division I competition, Wagner scored a grand total of 34 points in three losses.

Tonight on a cold, windy evening in Staten Island, the Seahawk offense came to life against Lehigh.

The Seahawks scored on their first offensive drives of the first half and second half on big plays, a 50 yard run by RB Ryan Fulse and a 30 yard pass from QB Ryan Massei to WR William Dale.  Fulse would add a touchdown and RB Denzel Knight would add touchdown runs of 24 and 60 yards to put up five touchdowns on the Mountain Hawk defense.

Unlike prior weeks, Lehigh maintained a lead against Wagner during stretches of the first half.  Junior RB Dominick Bragalone got a 26 yard run to give Lehigh and early lead, and junior QB Brad Mayes would take it in on a read option to go up 14-7.

But then the Seahawks would go on a 30-6 run after that aided by five Mayes interceptions.
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Yale At Lehigh Game Narratives: Into The Unknown

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Yale At Lehigh Game Narratives: Into The Unknown

One of the quirks of being a Lehigh fan is that generally, the Mountain Hawks play an Ivy League team in their season opener.  This year, that team is Yale.

This sets the Mountain Hawks up in an odd situation – Lehigh is in their third game, and Yale is an unknown quantity.  It’s something that all teams playing against Ivy League teams face, but at times it feels like something that the Patriot League has to deal with more.

Over the years, there’s been a back-and-forth debate: who benefits more, the team that’s had two weeks to work out the kinks, or the team that has the element of surprise?

“I’d like to believe we have the upper hand,” head coach Andy Coen said this week, “because we have played two games and you’d hope that Yale will make some first-game mistakes and we’ll be able to take advantage of them.”

Yale’s sophomore QB Kurt Rawlings had a different perspective.

“Being able to go in and have two weeks rather than [against] most teams [when] we only get to prepare for one week [has been a plus],” Rawlings said. “Having two weeks to be able to study up and almost know what they’re going to be showing and doing, is certainly going to help us. … They beat us last season, but I’m really excited. I think we’re going to do pretty good against them.”

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Monmouth Beats Up Lehigh And Takes Their Lunch Money, Win 46-27

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Monmouth Beats Up Lehigh And Takes Their Lunch Money, Win 46-27

(Photo Credit: Monmouth Athletics)

Football is a physical game, and it requires a tremendous amount of strength to line up, play after play, to push people around down after down.

As a result football games sometimes can evolve into contests where the teams push each other around, and such games can end up where one team gets worn down and the other pulls away for a big victory.

That’s what happened this weekend at Monmouth.

The Hawks started out behind the eight-ball early, falling behind by two scores, and then rallying to take a 27-21 lead relatively early in the third quarter.  But the physical beating, slowly and surely, took its toll, eventually knocking the offense out of kilter and the pushing the defense out of the way for their powerful running game.  In the end, Lehigh only could be punched in the mouth so many times, and fell, 46-27.

It was an especially hard loss to take because this isn’t how the 2017 season was supposed to happen.

“The tougher man wins,” head coach Andy Coen said after the game.  “They were a lot tougher and more physical than we were.”
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QUICK RECAP: A Tough Gut Punch To the Mountain Hawks, A 46-27 Defeat to Monmouth

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QUICK RECAP: A Tough Gut Punch To the Mountain Hawks, A 46-27 Defeat to Monmouth

It pretty much started with RB Pete Guerrerio’s 70 yard kickoff to open the game, and continued throughout a bruising, physical football game.Lehigh would battle back from a 14-0 deficit to take the lead at halftime, but ultimately surrendered the lead…

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Lehigh Will Need A Bad Memory, And A Great Memory, As They Head to Monmouth Next Weekend

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Lehigh Will Need A Bad Memory, And A Great Memory, As They Head to Monmouth Next Weekend

(Photo Credit: Chris Shipley/The Morning Call)

In the post game press conference, junior QB Brad Mayes was asked about how he felt about his performance in the 38-35 loss – a game where he had a stellar statistical game, with over 400 yards passing, 4 touchdowns and 0 interceptions, but the Mountain Hawks as a team came up short.

The Tampa, Florida native definitely had a fresher memory of what he considered mistakes.

“There were some throws out there that I wish I had back,” he said.  “I should have thrown for more than whatever I threw.  Whether it’s putting the ball on the outside shoulder, not throwing it low, or whatever – there were some throws I left out there today.  I’m going to have to sleep on it, come back next week, and try to make those throws.”

Season openers like this, where your team loses, are rarely deal-breakers when it comes to a football season.  Assuming Villanova continues to surge forward and have a good year, it’s likely that Mountain Hawks fans will look back at this game as a close, hard-fought loss against a tremendous team.

But critical in that assumption is how the team reacts after a loss like this – how a team rebounds the following week, and how they work.  In that sense, it should be an interesting week in the run-up to the road game at Monmouth next weekend.
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The Missed Opportunity: Lehigh Falls to Villanova, 38-35, In A Winnable Game

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The Missed Opportunity: Lehigh Falls to Villanova, 38-35, In A Winnable Game

(Photo Credit: Kyle Craig/Lehigh Valley Live)

Head coach Andy Coen would hear nothing of moral victories in the post game press conference.

“I thought we had every opportunity to win this football game,” Lehigh’s frustrated head coach said.

“When you go through this stuff,” he said, flipping through the pages of the post-game statistics packet, “you’re going to see a lot of mistakes.  You see it with some young guys, guys in their first game, but we had some guys that where it was just out of character.”

It was a game where neither side looked like they were in mid-season form, though you could see the quality shine through offensively on both sides at different times.  So the outcome hinged on mistakes, and who made fewer of them – and that team was Villanova.

That shouldn’t take away from the offensive fireworks on both sides.

There was the tremendous blocking up front that set up a great rushing day for Villanova RB Matt Gudzak, who ran for 145 yards and 2 touchdowns, and an effecient all-purpose yardage of a day for Wildcat QB Zach Bednarczyk, who went 17 for 23 passing and scored three touchdowns, two through the air and on the ground.

And there was the electricity of junior QB Brad Mayes repeatedly connecting with senior WR Troy Pelletier, senior WR Gatlin Casey, and the newest starter in the receiving corps, junior WR Luke Christiano.  Mayes went 33 for 49 passing for 406 yards and 4 touchdowns, and some of them were a sight to behold.

Yet it would boil down to mistakes – a pass here with too much mustard, a dropped reception there, a missed assignment there – and Lehigh simply made too many of them to beat a quality Top 10 ranked team at home.

“After the game, and we all got in our circle,” coach Coen said, “and I just told them all, you guys need to look into your mirror, and see how you feel about what you did or didn’t do right.  They were a very good football team, and I give them a lot of credit – they were very fast, and very physical.  This was an opportunity for us to beat a very good Villanova team, and also an opportunity to beat someone from the CAA, which I thought would be very important for us.  We didn’t get it done.”

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QUICK RECAP: Lehigh Comes Close, But Can’t Get Final Stop, Lose 38-35 to Villanova

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QUICK RECAP: Lehigh Comes Close, But Can’t Get Final Stop, Lose 38-35 to Villanova

Lehigh fell behind 21-7 and 28-14 in the first half, and battled back in the second half to give themselves a shot to win, but for the second straight year the Mountain Hawks came close but couldn’t close the deal, falling 38-35 to Villanova at Murray …

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Villanova at Lehigh Game Narratives: Excitement High In Bethlehem For Top 25 Matchup

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Villanova at Lehigh Game Narratives: Excitement High In Bethlehem For Top 25 Matchup

It’s different when you’re returning champions.

That much was clear when sifting through all the preseason print pieces and videos covering the Lehigh Mountain Hawks.

Expectations return – you’re no longer the “hunter”, as head coach Andy Coen explained, you’re the “hunted”.

Managing those expectations has been almost as important for this Lehigh football team as the regular conditioning and X and O’s drills of camp.

The common thread with the many print and video pieces and the many interviews is a sense of maturity and a businesslike ethic around this team, especially amongst its leadership.
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