Archive For The “Penn” Category
If you’d like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below.
I don’t ordinarily do do two things with my poll that I actually did this week:
1. I usually don’t demote a team completely out of the Top 25 if they’re a Top 5 team and they lose.
2. I usually don’t demote a team from the No. 1 slot if they win their game.
But that’s exactly what I did, after I looked at my poll with a fresh new set of eyes after some of the more interesting outcomes from the weekend.
I’d been meaning to demote Villanova for some time, not only due to their sort-of lackluster performance over the beginning of the season, but for their seemingly lackluster play going back to last season when Sam Houston upset them in the FCS Round of 8 last season. I was looking for a dominant performance against the worst team on their schedule, Penn, and instead the Quakers upset the Wildcats 24-13.
You could argue that they were getting things done with defense. You could have said that with the loss of their Walter Payton Award-nominated quaterback, QB John Robertson, they’d suffer. But the team that lost this past Thursday, simply, wasn’t a Top 25 team in my opinion. The confluence of all these factors had me dip them out of the Top 25 entirely.
It is not my favorite movie by a longshot, but this week my family and I watched Back to the Future, the seminal Robert Zemeckis coming-of-age movie starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.
I’ve always felt it’s an OK, meh movie. It seems to rely on gimmicks and time gags (“What’s a rerun?”) to get its yuks, and it has no business being as beloved as it remains to this day. My wife and my son loved it, as they have their own minds and, in our family, you’re allowed to like what you like without criticism. I watched it, happy they were happy, and amused.
In the back of my mind while watching Christopher Lloyd attach the cable to the tower clock, I was worried about Penn.
The consequences of a loss in this game to the 2015 season would have been severe. The Mountain Hawks were already coming off a rough 55-17 loss to James Madison, one where criticisms of the team, the coaches, and players were starting to be heard. A 1-2 start heading into two tough out-of-conference games versus Princeton and Yale could have the Mountain Hawks staring down a 1-4 start going into conference play.
Instead, Lehigh would crack 40 points at home in a 42-21 win over Penn, scoring six touchdowns and for the most part controlling the game in a way that wasn’t seen in a while at Murray Goodman Stadium.
With a three touchdown win and the Mountain Hawks dropping 40 points at home, are we… Back to the Future?
Read more »
“I talked to the kids, really all week,” head coach Andy Coen said in the run-up to this weekend’s Penn game on the heels of a tough 55-17 loss to No. 10 James Madison. “We weren’t thrilled with… everything… that happened in that game. We didn’t put our best foot forward.”
“We got on the guys,” he continued, “and said to them: You’ve got to win. You’ve got to make up your mind that you want to win. You have to want to start winning games.”
At 1-1 and the experience of a tough loss still fresh in everyone’s minds, winning this weekend at home and gaining momentum going forward into the rest of the season was the theme of the week.
This Saturday, the 2-1 Mountain Hawks at the end of the afternoon had fulfilled both objectives.
Lehigh’s 42-21 doubling up of Penn wasn’t a game of perfection. But it was a devastating Mountain Hawk offensive performance, coupled with enough big plays on defense, to get a very satisfying win for the home crowd of 6,971 on hand on a sunny, somewhat humid afternoon.
Read more »
Short and sweet. Live video of today’s game is available here:http://campusinsiders.com/network/patriot_league/liveEveryone’s favorite radio call will be available here from Matt Kerr and Tom Fallon in the box. Matt Markus will be reporting …
We break down the Penn game – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.
A lot has been made this week of Lehigh facing off against an Ivy team playing in their first game. It’s a fairly unique feature of FCS and the Patriot League, where Ivy League schools are frequently a part of the out-of-conference menu and the Ivy League teams, who choose to start their football season in mid-September, need some out-of-conference teams to begin the season.
It does certainly pose a challenge in certain respects. A team playing in their first game is freshest, less injured, and can surprise a team like it can in no other way the rest of the season – there is no game film really to study. On the other hand, teams playing in their first game are generally also sloppy, and need time to adapt to the speed of football. It is a double-edged sword.
In his Lehigh head coaching career, Andy Coen has been 5-4 in such games. Generally, oddly enough, they tend to be a good barometer for the rest of their seasons.
In seven of the nine games, and every game since 2008, a win in this game has equaled a winning season for Lehigh. A loss has equaled a losing season.
Last season, Lehigh lost a frustrating, heartbreaking game to Yale, 54-43, and finished 3-8 on the year.
Some college football opponents, no matter how many games between actual meetings, feel like backyard brawls.
Such is the case with the Penn game this weekend.
On paper, it’s been twelve years since Lehigh has faced off against Penn. The head coach in that game in 2003, Al Bagnoli, retired just last season, only to “unretire” at Columbia in an effort to turn around the moribund Lion program desperate to distance themselves from the Pete Mangurian error era.
On the surface, it would seem like much has changed – that little would remain from the remnants of that 2003 game in terms of links between the two schools.
But you’d be wrong.
When you look at this upcoming Lehigh and Penn game, you’ll see a lot of faces – old and new – that show that this rivalry – with a little r – is rekindling itself at exactly the right time.
Read more »
Lehigh’s relationship with the schools of the Ivy League go all the way back to the 1880s.
Yes, really.
In 1885, Lehigh’s fledgling football team opened the season with the University of Pennsylvania, who throttled the Brown and White 54-0.
1887 was the year that Princeton first squared off against Lehigh, throttling them 80-0
And it would be 1890 when Yale first hosted Lehigh, 26-0 winners.
These three traditional Ivy League football opponents appear on Lehigh’s football schedule for 2015 and will be a critical litmus test for this your Mountain Hawk football team.
But one opponent stands out more because of the fact that Lehigh hasn’t played them in more than a decade.
We’re going to be talking today about Penn, a rival (with a little r) that hasn’t faced off against Lehigh in over a decade.
|
| Paul Dashiell |
“A silver cup has been offered by Mr. R. P. Linderman, Lehigh ‘84, as a trophy of the foot-ball championship of Pennsylvania,” the Lehigh Burr reported in 1889. “Designs for the cup have not yet been prepared but it will be very handsome, of massive silver, while special care will be taken to secure a design thoroughly artistic and appropriate, and the cup will be fully equal to any college trophy of the kind ever offered. The [articles and conditions drawn up for the Championship] is not intended to form a foot-ball league, such a thing being deemed unnecessary, but to provide such general regulations as will fairly determine the state championship.”
The idea of Lehigh, Lafayette and Penn competing for the “state championship” has as its origins the student newspapers, who had started tallying the records of the games between each other in the hopes of crowning a mythical “champion of Pennsylvania”.
In 1888, Lehigh and Lafayette played each other twice, and played Penn once apiece in Philadelphia.
But the final records of Lehigh (2-1), Penn (2-1) and Lafayette (1-2) made it inconclusive as to who the state champion really was.
In 1889, with interest high in some sort of champions to be crowned, all three schools made an attempt to start a true “Championship of Pennsylvania”, complete with its own trophy. It was was founded in part to broaden the interest in football at both Lehigh and Lafayette, to be sure, but it also may have been a way to lock in Penn to playing return games in the Lehigh Valley, as Penn had already cancelled return games against both Lehigh and Lafayette in the past.
It made for a thrilling season, and one that further intensified the already-fierce Rivalry.
Read more »
It’s that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 4 of the college football season. Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here?
Last week I was remiss in forgetting to mention Lehigh’s broadcast information.
Tonight at 6PM, Lehigh at Princeton will be broadcast nationally on NBC Sports Network, and will also be available for live streaming on NBC Sports Live Extra, if your cable company supports it (you’ll probably have to check for yourself).
And I’ll be listenting to the pregame on ESPN 1230 and 1320 of the Lehigh Valley, too, with Tom Fallon, Matt Kerr and Matt Markus. That will also be live streamed here.
