Archive For The “Deshawn Salter” Category
We break down the Yale game – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.
This week, College Sports Journal picked their order of finish of the Ivy League and the Elis were picked to finish 5th, in contrast to the preseason Ivy League media poll, where they were picked fourth.
“Exhale, Elis, you did it,” it said. “For only the second time in a decade, Yale finally beat their most bitter Rival in The Game, 21-14, giving head coach Tony Reno something pleasant to bring into the offseason for a change. That win, however, somewhat masks a maddeningly inconsistent 2016, where Yale went 3-7, gave up more than 40 points on defense four times, and somehow managed to lose to Cornell 27-13 at Schoellkopf Field. The win in The Game will provide hope in New Haven and a good feeling in the offseason, but will it translate into a winning season and an Ivy League title run?”
“The past is the past and we aren’t concerned with it. We have learned from our mistakes, and we are ready to move on.”
That comes from junior RB Micco Brisker, who was quoted two years ago after the Mountain Hawks came back from a trip to Princeton where Lehigh fought hard, but fell, to the Tigers 52-26.
The similarities between that week and this week are something that I cannot shake.
Like this week, Lehigh came back home that season to face off against Yale after a tough, physical loss. Like this week, the Mountain Hawks were coming off a school record being set by senior WR Troy Pelletier in a losing effort. Like this week, Yale started RB Deshawn Salter, a mild surprise after the expected starter went down to injury. And like this week, Lehigh came back home after a loss looking to right the ship.
In 2015, Lehigh lost the game.
In 2015, Brisker and LB Colton Caslow talked a good game about being prepared for that week, fixing mistakes and moving forward. But it didn’t result in a win, nor did it result in a Patriot League championship season.
We break down the Yale game – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.
Before we get to all the nuts and bolts of the breakdown, Yale’s game notes and mascots, though, it’s worth highlighting a great piece by Lehigh athletics on senior OL Brandon Short that was just released earlier today by Lehighsports.com.
“Regardless, Short’s approach to every practice, every game and every opportunity to improve is the same, whether this is his last season or he returns in 2017,” the article reads. “That extra sense of urgency, which seniors often say they feel, has been there for Short ever since returning from a season-ending injury he sustained early in the 2014 season [at Yale].
“‘That experience really brought things into perspective,’ he said. “We always hear coaches say play every play like it’s your last. I started three games as a sophomore, which got taken away in the matter of two plays. It really opened my eyes to enjoy and appreciate what I’m doing.
“Because of that injury and missing the rest of the season, Short hopes to return to Lehigh for a fifth year to earn his master’s degree while continuing to play football. Several logistics still need to be figured out, but that’s his goal.”
Today’s “Know Your 2016 Opponents” series continues with the team that is predicted by College Sports Journal to finish 3th in the Ivy League: Yale.
Although it would have been a great narrative coup if Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton met at the classic 14-12 upset of the Bulldogs by Harvard in 1970 at wind-swept Cambridge, they instead, the world learned this week, met in the spring of 1971 at the law school library.
One of the curious things about the Clintons is their lack of association with the “Yale-Harvard Football Game”, as it’s now known, even though Bill Clinton is a self-admitted sports nut, able to recall times when he congratulated winning teams that visited him in the White House, or times as President or at the Clinton Foundation reminiscing about Montana Grizzlies football.
In the movie Rudy, Notre Dame head coach Dan Devine gets painted unjustifiably as a bit of a jerk.
His treatment in the movie, I feel, is what prevents Rudy from being a mostly-loved movie from a near-universally loved movie.
Some people will never forgive the moviemakers, for the convenience of drama, for changing the reality of his coaching career.
Yet despite this fact, actor Chelcie Ross manages to deliver one of the iconic halftime locker-room speeches in cinema. You’re not really supposed to like him, as the movie goes, but somehow he manages this great line:
“No one, and I mean no one, comes into our house and pushes us around.”
It’s great because it is a universal football concept. Bowl-eligibility, conference games, even in playing out a 3-8 season, it doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to play the game of football and get pushed around, ever, but to be pushed around at home? Somewhere, you have to draw a line.
This weekend, Yale pushed us around. At home. There’s no hiding it. They weren’t always pretty doing it – the Bulldogs made a fair number of mistakes in the form of penalties and turnovers. But ultimately, they won the game because they pushed us around.
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It was a game that was pretty much the opposite of what Lehigh football fans would have wanted from homecoming.
People want games in Murray Goodman Stadium that are sunny and 70 degrees, with perhaps just a hint of wind. Instead, despite the fact that a threatened hurricane never arrived, temperatures dipped into the 50s to go with some cold, gusty winds, which caused not a few people to get runny noses.
Homecoming is supposed to be a happy time, but the dark, overcast skies didn’t make the game feel like a warm, welcoming place. Though the Marching 97 tried their best, as did the Alumni band, the dreariness hung over the stadium like an unwelcome guest.
Home fans always want a win on homecoming, hopefully with exciting, crisp, vibrant execution from the guys in the brown jerseys, but again, that too would end up being the opposite of what Lehigh fans were hoping for on this afternoon.
Yale would turn over the ball three times, be penalized 11 times for 94 yards, and be limited to 200 yards passing on the afternoon. But they would also enjoy over 200 yards rushing from RB Deshawn Salter, playing in his first career start filling in for injured RB Candler Rich, and that, coupled with plenty of mistakes on the Lehigh side, would amount to a comfortable 27-12 win for the Buldogs.
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