What a night

[RichHParticipant]

First exhilarating , great atmosphere and crowd. Then frustrating. Cant say whether it was the stage or the 2 week layoff but we were slow to start. down 6-1 but what a run from then on. Wow. last 5 minutes we were running on fumes. last goal was heartbreaking. Our longstick just didnt slide quick enough. Pollion was absolutley phenominal. A great season, we all should be ery proud. Next year we will be very good again. Lose some greta seniors but return a lot of talent.Just watched Tivo of game , a 2 hour ad for Lehigh. Should be mandatory viewing for all recruit prospects

[norcalfanParticipant]

Wow! I could not bear to post after the loss. I felt bad for the guys. That last goal was painful. I am new to lacrosse, so I don’t know the rules that well. How could they have stopped the goal? Great season LU!

[TMHParticipant]

I second everything RichH said. I sat among a lot of Maryland fans in the 1st half and they were incredibly nice and complimentary of Lehigh’s program. I hope this is only the beginning of the tide turning in attendance for lehigh sports. Who knows how many tickets would have been sold for this event had we had additional seating? Fran Troyan indicated that the crowd (although only about 200) was the largest he could remember. I would so love to see this carry over to football and basketball next year.

[lehigh90Participant]

How can we draw 2300 for lacrosse, 5000 for wrestling (PSU), and 900 for basketball? Where is the disconnect? And, please, don’t tell me it is the drive over the mountain, clearly it is not.

[RichHParticipant]

No clue but it is there. My guess is travel to Stabler is a factor but it didn’t used to be.

[vanParticipant]

suspect we draw way more than 900 for a NCAA tournament game in basketball. Can’t compare 900 for b-b regulare season to the first NCAA appearence by the Lax team ever.

[lehigh90Participant]

They got over 2000 for a regular season lacrosse game this year, no? I have seen Lehigh basketball play for the PL Championship in front of 500 people. I think Lehigh could play Kansas in the NCAA Bball Final in Stabler, and they wouldn’t sell it out.

[TMHParticipant]

This may be blind optimism but I believe Lehigh basketball has kicked off this momentum shift with their victory over Duke. Suddenly Lehigh sports has become more relevant. Sport fans in the Lehigh Valley suddenly have a low cost destination.
Why did lacrosse draw well? Because suddenly we are a nationally ranked team playing other nationally ranked teams. Those in the lacrosse community will come out to see the best.
I hope that Joe Sterrett will put together a highly competitive schedule incl an ACC team to come to Ulrich to keep this momentum going.
Basketball is a different animal altogether. 1.) It competes with wrestling which has a long standing fan base 2.)Even with last year’s showing, we may not have cracked the Top #70 and because of the size of the arena, we can never put together a package to draw a big name rival here.
I feel a momentum shift though, although only time will tell if it’s sustainable. C.J. McCollum has quickly become very marketable. How Lehigh handles it remains to be seen but I envision significant increases in attendance next season.

[RichHParticipant]

From your mouth to Joe’s ear TMH. Pard board going nuts with envy right now under Lax heading. From what I can gather they suck so badly at sports because we have the lowest grad rate in Pl for football. They should change their background color to green.

[vanParticipant]

Yeah, Pards are having a bad year, and with us excelling at football, lax, wrestling, B-B, and softball all in same year, well better hide the sharp instruments!

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