Archive For The “Wagner” Category
You could say that following Lehigh football through the first five weeks has been an exercise in frustration.
That’s probably understating things quite a bit.
The season was not supposed to unfurl itself in this way.
The Mountain Hawks, rated in the Top 25 to start the season, remained that way after losing a tough game against Villanova, but then fell out of the national rankings when they followed that up with a loss to Monmouth.
And since, the team has just kept losing, each week more excruciating than the last.
Some Lehigh fans appear to think that the Mountain Hawks could turn things around and make a run at the Patriot League Championship in a world where the Patriot League is a combined 9-20 against out-of-conference foes.
I suppose it is still possible.
But to this fan, this goal can’t be the focus of the coming week.
Speaking as a fan, I feel the focus of all the players and coaches needs to be on one singular goal: how to win one, singular, football game.
In their last 3 football games against Division I competition, Wagner scored a grand total of 34 points in three losses.
Tonight on a cold, windy evening in Staten Island, the Seahawk offense came to life against Lehigh.
The Seahawks scored on their first offensive drives of the first half and second half on big plays, a 50 yard run by RB Ryan Fulse and a 30 yard pass from QB Ryan Massei to WR William Dale. Fulse would add a touchdown and RB Denzel Knight would add touchdown runs of 24 and 60 yards to put up five touchdowns on the Mountain Hawk defense.
Unlike prior weeks, Lehigh maintained a lead against Wagner during stretches of the first half. Junior RB Dominick Bragalone got a 26 yard run to give Lehigh and early lead, and junior QB Brad Mayes would take it in on a read option to go up 14-7.
But then the Seahawks would go on a 30-6 run after that aided by five Mayes interceptions.
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Not headed to Staten Island tonight?
OK. I do sort-of understand. After all, you might be avoiding vampires, because the game will end at night. Perhaps your GPS is broken, and the Staten Island Expressway is something you can’t find, or perhaps you’re trying to avoid Yankee traffic.
So how do you catch the game?
Never fear. LFN’s here.
The media in the run-up to the Wagner game has been more upbeat than one might think considering the Mountain Hawks’ 0-4 start.
That’s not to say that head coach Andy Coen is at all happy with how things have started, but his answers to this week’s media questions were not what some fans may have expected.
“I’m disappointed, I’m not going to lie,” he told Keith Groller of The Morning Call. “But again, this is a funny game. It’s never easy. It’s hard to win a game. It really is. At times last year we made it look really, really easy. Right now, we’re making it look really hard.”
On Lehigh Sports Central this week, he said he felt like Lehigh was more competitive against Penn than they were against Yale.
“We just continue to make mistakes,” Coen said. “We got the ball first, and turned the ball away.. we’ve got to get away from all of that stuff, and start playing better football.”
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We break down the Wagmer game – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.
Like the Mountain Hawks, the Seahawks are aiming to reverse a multi-game losing streak, but Wagner’s current problems are pretty much the opposite of Lehigh’s.
Since the season-ending shoulder injury to QB Alex Thomson, the Seahawks have had pretty good defensive play at times, but it’s the offense that has let them down. Against Columbia, for example, the offense went 1 for 9 on 3rd down conversions and only was able to put up 14 points.
Worrying for Lehigh, though, is that the offense that they have been able to generate has come mostly from a bruising running game. Of their 307 yards of offense against Columbia, 187 of it came on the ground.
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We break down the Wagmer game – and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip.
Like the Mountain Hawks, the Seahawks are aiming to reverse a multi-game losing streak, but Wagner’s current problems are pretty much the opposite of Lehigh’s.
Since the season-ending shoulder injury to QB Alex Thomson, the Seahawks have had pretty good defensive play at times, but it’s the offense that has let them down. Against Columbia, for example, the offense went 1 for 9 on 3rd down conversions and only was able to put up 14 points.
Worrying for Lehigh, though, is that the offense that they have been able to generate has come mostly from a bruising running game. Of their 307 yards of offense against Columbia, 187 of it came on the ground.
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Lehigh has never played Wagner in football, despite the fact that the schools are separated only by an hour and a half drive and that the institutions both sponsor FCS football in an area of the country where nearby opponents are sometimes hard to come by.
Long-time Patriot League fans might remember Wagner as legendary Lafayette head coach Bill Russo‘s coaching stint before he came to Easton to coach the Leopards for an 18 year stretch from 1981 to 1999.
Back in those days, Wagner was a Division III school, playing local schools like Iona, Pace, Seton Hall and Fordham, during a time when it was OK to field a Division III football program and a Division I athletics program (this is something that is no longer allowed today).
Since then, though, many Lehigh fans may not know that much about Wagner College, the Seahawk football program, and their ascent to becoming, eventually, and FCS playoff team.
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Most of the teams on Lehigh’s football schedule have become so familiar that it seems like they are on the Mountain Hawk football schedule every single season. Ivy League teams, Villanova, Monmouth… to anyone following Lehigh football over the last decade, they are names fans have heard of.
Not so Wagner.
That’s nothing against the Seahawks, who have played many Lehigh opponents in the last five years (Lafayette, Central Connecticut State, Monmouth, Georgetown, Holy Cross, and Colgate in the FCS Playoffs in 2012).
But, strangely for a school so close to Bethlehem, Wagner has never played Lehigh in football. That will change this season, when the Mountain Hawks travel to Staten Island to compete in their only night game of the year.
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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.
(Photo Credit: The Oregonian)Even though Lehigh isn’t taking on any FBS teams this season, it’s not too early to take a look at the 2016 college football schedule and look at some of the games that pit FCS teams vs. FBS teams and look for potential ups…
