Archive For The “Brandon Bialkowski” Category

(Photo Credit: Matt Smith/The Express-Times)
When I look back at Lehigh’s football program over the last four years, I can’t think of a single game that wasn’t meaningful.
And when you think about this fact, that’s a powerful thing to say about this group of seniors that will graduate this season.
So many programs have off years, years in between quality starting quarterbacks, years when players who find themselves in NFL training camps graduate, and the number of holes to fill are too great to compete for championships, let alone playoff spots.
But that didn’t happen for this group of Lehigh athletes in 2013.
Despite needing to replace two players who found themselves in NFL training camps, WR Ryan Spadola and LB Billy Boyko, a starting quarterback, QB Michael Colvin, and an all-Patriot League secondary consisting of CB Bryan Andrews and S Billy O’Brien, the expectations on this year’s team was great: Win the Patriot League. Build off a 10-1 season. Make the playoffs.
That’s what going to Lehigh to play football is all about: Winning. High expectations, on and off the field. And despite the rebuilding, and despite the gigantic injury to QB Brandon Bialkowski, this team made every game meaningful.
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Late on Monday night, senior QB Brandon Bialkowski delivered the news that Lehigh fans feared, but also suspected: that he will be gone for the rest of the year with season-ending collarbone surgery.
It appears that the collarbone was broken so badly that he’ll need an iron plate and screws to reconnect it.
The guy we call “BB” got hurt in the game against Bucknell, after leading the Mountain Hawks to a 6-2 record and positioning Lehigh towards another potential Patriot League title.
Thoughts and prayers to him and his family.
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I didn’t get much sleep this week.
And when I did get sleep, I had this “nightmare”, which I swear on my grandmother’s grave is what I had pass through my head this week.
It was a vision of some office – nobody’s office, really, just the type of sunny, airy office that only exists in the world of dreams.
In it were Lehigh head coach Andy Coen, offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini, and myself.
Both men were grim. There were going over game film of a blowout loss to Bucknell.
As each lowlight hit the computer monitor, coach Coen and coach Cecchini would just get angrier and angrier – and would look sideways at me, as if I, somehow, were really to blame.
What was kind of funny was that even though I’d had this psychic dream of Lehigh getting crushed by Bucknell this Saturday, I still didn’t believe it could actually happen.
Waking up on Saturday, I saw no reason to believe that my dream would in any way be indicative of what would actually happen. I actually talked myself out of it – chalking it up to stress, the job, the long season. Lehigh will win, I told myself. It’s what always happens when Lehigh plays Bucknell.
After all, Lehigh was 6-1, No. 15 in the country, and had just played their best game of the season last weekend against Georgetown. What could possibly go wrong?
Who are you going to believe, what you’ve been reading the last nine weeks, or some stupid “nightmare”?
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(Photo Credit: Kiera Wood/The Columbia Spectator)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Columbia game.

As sports comebacks go, this one was pretty epic.
Down 5-1 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Boston OF David Ortiz jumped on the first pitch from Tigers P Joaquin Benoit, a pitch he put over the short right-field bullpen fence in Fenway Park.
OF Torii Hunter leaped, and the baseball appeared to bounce off his glove, but he went head-over-heels into the dugout without the ball in hand, and Big Papi had tied the game at “five”.
Like so many Lehigh football games this season, Boston came from behind, thanks to heady baserunning by OF Johnny Gomes, and ultimately won Game 2 of the ALCS 6-5.
It seemed apropos that this game would have that score, and be won in this way, because it seems like that game could also be a microcosm of this Lehigh football regular season, too.
Everywhere you look at this season thus far, things are coming up “fives” for Lehigh.
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Brazilian soccer fans are one hard to please bunch.
It’s not enough for the soccer nation that brought us Pele, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho to simply win their soccer games against the rest of the world: to the high-maintenance fans of the seleção, every game involving the Brazilian nation team needs to had flair and panache: style points. They can still win, but if they win boring, the fans become restless.
Similarly, Lehigh fans looked to the Mountain Hawks to go up to the upper tip of Manhattan and heap on a stylish win filled with scoring, crispness, and focus. For some Lehigh fans, Saturday’s game wasn’t supposed to be about the win, it was about the style of the win.
If they were looking to win on style, they didn’t get that.
But more importantly, the Brown and White did get the win, notching a 24-10 victory, inching closer to their goal of a Patriot League title and the all-important autobid.
It wasn’t crisp, and it wasn’t pretty, but it was enough to allow Lehigh to cross the George Washington Bridge with a 5-1 record.
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(Photo Credit: The Morning Call)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the Fordham game.

(Photo Credit: Justin Lafleur/Lehigh Athletics)
It was a real Yankee crowd in the Bronx this afternoon – a sellout, overflow Bronx crowd of over 7,800.
Without a Yankee postseason to worry about, the nationally-ranked Fordham Rams had something they hadn’t had on an October afternoon in a very long time: the undivided sports attention of the local area, playing against another Top 25 team on national television.
When the calls didn’t go the Rams’ way, the fans stood up the same way they might in New Yankee Stadium, arguing the call. And when a play didn’t have yellow laundry on the field, indeed, the “Bronx Cheer” the Borough made famous did indeed ripple through the crowd.
Not that Fordham needed help from the refs.
The Rams may have had some doubters going into this weekend with their 5-0 record, but there sure aren’t any more after a resounding, offensive clinic that made Lehigh pay desperately for two turnovers and ultimately had Fordham go to 6-0 with a 52-34 victory.
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(Photo Credit: Matt Smith/The Express-Times)
Below the flip, enjoy this week’s “LFN Players of the Week” for the New Hampshire game.

(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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