Archive For The “Villanova” Category
(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.”
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 …
Not going to the home opener?
First of all, what’s wrong with you?
OK. So your bicycle is in the shop, it’s the Pee Wee Soccer quarterfinals, or some other very good reason has arisen where you can’t make it to Murray Goodman for the game.
Never fear. LFN’s here.
Villanova at Lehigh Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction: Who Will Be Pennsylvania’s FCS Champion?
One of my favorite stories of the early Lehigh football era was the idea that Lehigh, Lafayette and Penn in the late 1800s battled for the “Championship of Pennsylvania”.
In 2017, it wouldn’t be prudent to call a game versus Lehigh and Villanova the “Championship of Pennsylvania”, thanks to the presence of Penn State, Pitt and Temple in the state.
In FCS though, Lehigh vs. Villanova, the only two STATS and Coach’s Poll Top 25 teams that are based in Pennsylvania, it could certainly be spun in that way.
Villanova, at No. 9/10, travels to Lehigh, No. 17/17, to determine who is the FCS Champion of Pennsylvania.
I like it.
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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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One has been here before; the other has not, at least not lately.
Over the course of the last few seasons, Villanova Stadium has hosted all sorts of games involving Top 25 teams. James Madison, New Hampshire, Richmond – all of these CAA teams have been to the Main Line, at one time or another, at the same time the Wildcats have also been in the Top 25. When it comes to hosting big football games, Villanova is no stranger to that situation.
Not so, Lehigh.
Sure, the Mountain Hawks have played a bunch of Top 25 teams over the course of the last several seasons. And last year, Lehigh returned to the Top 25 as well.
But the Mountain Hawks haven’t hosted a game like this, a Top 25 tilt between two opponents that are both in the Top 25, since the Mountain Hawks beat New Hampshire 34-27 back in 2012.
This year’s season opener represents the cumulation of the long, hard road of building a Top 25, national-caliber FCS football team. Last season was a year of a Patriot League championship, a return to national respect, and rings. And it all leads to this weekend, one of the biggest games on the Week 1 FCS National schedule that will provide a tremendous test to see how this 2017 Mountain Hawk team might turn out this season.
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(Photo Credit: Akira Suwa/Philly.com)
Writing a season preview about Villanova used to be the easiest job in the world.
Just grab your boilerplate biographical information about future hall-of-fame head coach Andy Talley, do a little Googling of the Wildcat’s next up-and-coming NFL prospects, come up with a dozen synonyms for the words “tough” and “challenge”, and the preview basically writes itself.
But this season’s task of facing Villanova is simply different than all of those other years. Talley, the only coach Villanova has ever known since restarting their football program in 1985 after a failed attempt to pull the plug on it in 1981 in the middle of spring practice, has finally retired from the head coaching ranks. While the same familiar trappings of high preseason rankings and potential NFL prospects remain, their new head coach, longtime Talley assistant Mark Ferrante, is now running the Wildcats and will be seeking his first win as a collegiate head football coach.
The three things that are certain is that the Wildcats are ranked No. 10 in the STATS FCS Top 25 Poll to start the year, that they’re ranked No. 9 in the FCS Coaches’ Poll, and that when they come and visit Murray Goodman Stadium on September 2nd at 12:30 PM, they’ll be playing Lehigh in a battle between Top 25 teams.
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One of the more interesting aspects of covering Lehigh football for so long is the fact that you end up seeing future NFL players on their rise to the big show.
In fact, two players who squared off against the Mountain Hawks in particular have an excellent chance of being drafted on Day 2 or Day 3 of the NFL draft.
But those not the only Lehigh football opponents that will be hoping to get a phone call from an NFL team this Friday or Saturday.
Though few Patriot League, Ivy League or even CAA players enter their football programs with the NFL as their main goal, every football player that matriculates to these schools still harbor the dream of dominating their league and as a result get an opportunity to pursue their NFL dream.
And it is true that NFL scouts come to FCS football games to look for talent that might have been overlooked. Many years ago I was in Hofstra’s press box, watching the Pride take on New Hampshire, with NFL scouts from the Colts and Saints there to watch WR Marques Colston play. The Saints decision to pursue Colston may very well have come from that game in Hempstead, New York.
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You didn’t ask for them, but here’s my pick for this week’s FCS Top 25.
I’m pretty proud of myself for not falling into the trap of South Dakota State.
Many people, after the Jackrabbits’ huge win over North Dakota State, vaulted them to the Top 5 of their polls, but I know better. The craziness of the Missouri Valley I thought would eventually catch up with them, so I had only reluctantly put them at No. 10.
Their loss to 3-5 Illinois State, taken in isolation, was a shocker – but perhaps not completely shocking, though, considering the Missouri Valley has not one but two teams that have beaten Power Five Teams and also have five losses.
In fact, there are three Missouri Valley teams – Illinois State, South Dakota and Northern Iowa – that can plausibly say, if they get to 6-5, they have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs as an at-large team, thanks to perceived quality wins.
You didn’t ask for them, but here’s my pick for this week’s FCS Top 25.
This week’s candidate for the LFN Top 25 curse? Sacred Heart, with Colgate a very close second, but there were a lot of teams in the lower reaches of my Top 25 that suffered defeat, in a list that includes Fordham, Southern Utah and (again) William and Mary, who suffered a second straight crushing defeat in two weeks, this time at the hands of New Hampshire.
Never in a million years did I ever think Tennessee State, Cornell and North Carolina A&T would simultaneously be in my Top 25, yet there they are.
