Archive For The “Dreland James” Category

#Rivalry152 Game Breakdown And Fearless Prediction: Don’t Sell Lafayette Short

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#Rivalry152 Game Breakdown And Fearless Prediction: Don’t Sell Lafayette Short

We break down #Rivalry152 – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.

When you take away The Rivalry, when you take away the emotions, when you take away the craziness, the energy – what do we have?  When you look at the Xs and Os, what do you have?

Certainly, this game, like every Rivalry game, will be dictated and informed by emotion.  You can count on the fact, as a Lehigh fan, that Lafayette will play out of their minds.  For their seniors, it is guaranteed to be their last game played together as a team.  For them, there is no practicing on Thanksgiving.

Countless football teams have taken this “300” mentality and turned it into wins.  Quarterbacks that used to struggle to not get intercepted suddenly become the second coming of QB Tom Brady.  Linebackers that didn’t wrap up their tackles before suddenly become LB Mike Singletary.  It can happen to Lehigh.  Don’t think that it can’t.

That shouldn’t stop us, though, from looking over the Leopards and seeing what they’re all about.  They will put together a gameplan to come away with victory.  It’s up to the Mountain Hawks to keep that from happening.

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#Rivalry152 Game Preview: Two Different Paths For Two Ancient Rivals

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#Rivalry152 Game Preview: Two Different Paths For Two Ancient Rivals

It is an easy narrative to point at the 150th meeting of The Rivalry as the turnaround for the Lehigh football program, where the Mountain Hawks got together after that bitter, bitter loss and decided that enough was enough, and that they were going to not allow their team to be a cellar-dweller.  

For Lafayette, though, you need to go back further, past some very enormous wins over Lehigh, and wonder. 
“I can’t believe I typed it, but there it is,” I wrote back in 2006 after a crushing 49-28 loss where Lehigh was dominated on both lines of scrimmage.   “We’ve lost three straight to Lafayette. and I’ve got some news: We’re no longer the hunted. The sooner we realize that we now have to be the hunter, the better off we’ll be.”
The co-championship they shared with the Leopards that year had the feel of the worst consolation prize imaginable.  For the second straight year, Lafayette had stolen the FCS Playoff bid right from under the Mountain Hawks, and it was Lehigh left to sit at home to stew.  The post game press conference was as down and dark as could be, the double indignity of losing to Lafayette, and losing any chance at a postseason bid, at the same time.

It felt like Lafayette was on the brink of becoming permanent contenders for the Patriot League championship, meaning their torture of Appalachian State and UMass in the playoffs in consecutive years would be a regular happening over the next decade.  
But it never happened.
This year, Lehigh travels to Easton in their big Rivalry game, sitting at 8-2 and having already clinched a portion of the Patriot League championship, only seeking to remove the “co-” from the word “championship”.  As emotions go, the Mountain Hawks couldn’t be riding more of a high, winners of eight straight.
And Lafayette sits at the opposite extreme, sitting at 2-8 and wondering how they’ve gotten to this point, with only three wins over the last two years.

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