Lehigh, Lafayette football heading toward their annual matchup
What was quite possibly unthinkable in August has turned into a good possibility in mid-November for the Lehigh football team.
The Mountain Hawks, coming off back-to-back 2-9 seasons, are in position to win the Patriot League championship.
They must beat Colgate at noon Saturday at Goodman Stadium and Lafayette a week later in edition No. 160 of college football's most-played rivalry and have Bucknell lose to either Holy Cross or Colgate in its last two games and the Mountain Hawks would be league champs for the first time since 2017.
Lehigh, Bucknell and Holy Cross enter the weekend with 3-1 league records, but last Saturday's taut 10-7 win at Holy Cross gives the Mountain Hawks the tiebreaker over the Crusaders. A 38-35 Bison win over Lehigh in overtime on Sept. 28, gives Bucknell and old friend Dave Cecchini a tiebreaking edge over his alma mater. That's why the Mountain Hawks don't totally control their own destiny.
What they can control is maintaining the same one-play-at-a-time approach they have had in their three-game win streak which has given them a 6-3 overall record — the best in the league — and assured them of their first winning season since 2016.
"We're having some success right now because we're focusing on what we need to focus on," second-year coach Kevin Cahill said. "We're not a finished product by any means. We need to get better each day. We have a lot of things to clean up, but we're playing meaningful football right now."
Last week's 10-7 win over Holy Cross may not have been what followers of that rivalry have come to expect, but it's a signature for this new brand of Lehigh football that is starting to resonate within the fan base.
"Were we as dynamic offensively as we wanted to be? No," Cahill said. "Did we play lights out defensively? Yes, with the exception of a few plays we need to clean up. We just want to have one more point than our opponent. That's the mantra our kids have bought into and our coaches are scheming it that way. Whatever we have to do get a win, that's how we're playing. The kids are starting to play for each other, which is becoming contagious."
Lehigh is fifth nationally in passing defense (145.9 yards per game) and eighth in total defense (287.8 ypg). In the last three games, the Mountain Hawks have allowed just 32 points.
They have had 44 tackles for loss, 25 sacks, 12 interceptions and 14 takeaways overall.
On offense, the days of Air Lehigh are gone. The Mountain Hawks have run the ball for 1,827 yards on 369 carries while passing for 1,202 on 170 attempts.
In a sense it's a throwback to an era when solid running games and stout defensive efforts were the pathway to wins and titles. It's physical football with games won on the line of scrimmage and not necessarily with catches 25 or 30 yards down the field.
It's a style that suits junior linebacker Tyler Olchojski, a New Jersey product, just fine. He had a career-high 12 tackles against Colgate last year.
"We're right where we thought we'd be," he said. "We're just focused on winning each day. We're going to stick to our recipe which is doing the little things right and at a very high level."
Olchojski has seen the struggles of the past few seasons and said of the change: "Culturally, there's a high sense of awareness. You can talk about brotherhood, you can talk about accountability, but are you really living those things day in and day out? We're really seeing it in action. Brotherhood we define as sacrifice, trust and love. And we're really sacrificing, really trusting and loving each other. I am playing for the guy next to me and the guy behind me and the guy on the other side of the ball. It's a beautiful thing. We have to continue to live it day in and day out and raise our standard."
Aside from Lafayette, Colgate is traditionally Lehigh's biggest rival. Even though the Raiders are scuffling at 2-8 overall, 1-3 league, they would love to come to the Lehigh Valley and rain on Lehigh's Patriot League parade.
Marian Catholic graduate Stan Dakosty had his team come to the area last year and temporarily slow down Lafayette's title run with a 37-34 overtime win at Fisher Stadium.
Cahill grew up within a hour's drive of Hamilton, New York, and knows all about Colgate football.
"Stan and I are good friends and we kind of grew up in this profession together and lean on each other for a lot of different things, just not this week," Cahill said. "I have a lot of respect for him and Colgate football. They do things the right way. They are 2-8, but they are not a 2-8 football team. You know it's going to come down to the fourth quarter and you make the play or you don't. Last week there were three Patriot League games and the combined point differential was five points. Our score was considered the blowout of the week. So Colgate is extremely dangerous. They're looking forward to coming down here and battling us. We have to play our style of football and do it the right way."
Stonehill at Lafayette
While Lehigh plays Colgate, Lafayette also returns home for its final home game of the season with a 12:30 p.m. kickoff. The Leopards (5-5, 2-3) pulled off a come-from-behind, 21-20 win at Colgate last week and would like to keep the momentum going against a nonleague foe.
"The kids played extremely hard and never quit at Colgate," Leopards coach John Troxell said. "It's a hard place to play and we did not play a perfect game by far and I am still waiting for us to put it all together which we are going to do here in the next couple of weeks. But I am proud of the effort and the way they fought and it was a big lesson to learn that you're never out of it. We've won a couple of close games at the end this year and we've also lost a couple close ones at the end this year. We're going to have fight to the end of these last two games as well."
Stonehill, located in Easton, Massachusetts, is in just its third season as an FCS program after moving up from Division II. The Skyhawks (2-8) are members of the Northeast Conference and feature Caden Henritzy, a freshman from Northampton, as a starting linebacker. Henritzy is fifth on the team in tackles with 36.
