Friday, November 08, 2013

Five things to look for in Lehigh's football game vs. Holy Cross

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/

FROM KEITH GROLLER


It's the biggest game of the season. Coaches say that every week, but Lehigh coach Andy Coen truly meant it on Wednesday when he talked about Saturday's game against Holy Cross at Goodman Stadium.
Lehigh, despite its 48-10 shellacking at Bucknell, still has a chance to win a share of the Patriot League title and receive the league's automatic berth to the NCAA FCS playoffs. And those are the team's goals going into every season.
The loss at Bucknell kind of put a dark cloud over the entire season, so much so that it's easy to forget that this is still a 6-2 team that played some very exciting games through the first two months of the season.
It figures to get a lot more exciting from here.
Here are five things to look for, and most are rather obvious:
1. The play of junior QB Matt McHale. Coen and the players at the weekly media luncheon expressed great confidence in the junior from New Jersey who was coached in high school by former Lehigh QB Marty Horn. We've seen glimpses of McHale in a couple of games and it's hard to determine how much -- if any -- drop off there will be from Brandon Bialkowski, who suffered a fractured collarbone. We do know that the offense played at a very high level under Bialkowski. BB wasn't perfect and had a few too many INTs, but still was remarkable in engineering comeback after comeback. He especially had a connection with Lee Kurfis. We'll see if Kurfis doesn't shine as much with McHale controlling the trigger.
2. The play of the defense. Tyler Ward said it after Fordham and he could have said it after Bucknell -- embarrassing. The Mountain Hawks defense must play better than they have, especially against the run,  for this team to have any shot at running the table because Holy Cross freshman Peter Pujals is one of just three terrific quarterbacks Lehigh will face down the stretch.
3. Turnovers. Lehigh has been destroyed by them. It is absolutely remarkable that this team has won six games with a minus-11 turnover ratio. Coen said that trying "to get the ball out" was emphasized during the bye week. It's hard to focus on "getting the ball out" when you have trouble stopping people in the first place, but Lehigh must create turnovers to help out the offense in these critical games.
4. The running game will play a more crucial role. Keith Sherman has had some big games and Sean Farrell has run effectively as well. Look for McHale to run much more frequently by design than Bialkowski. Ditto for freshman Nick Shafnisky if he gets into these, which is a good possibility.
5. Emotion. Leadership. Execution. All of these elements must be on display at all times. Lehigh has lacked all three at various points this season. Coen didn't like what he saw when the Fordham game got away and the lackadaisical effort the following week against Columbia was, in some regard, even more disconcerting. This team should have been taught a valuable lesson at Bucknell and should have taken it to heart and should now realize that 100 percent effort must be given in every game. And some leaders have got to step up and rally the troops. If this team is going to beat Holy Cross, which gave Fordham everything the Rams wanted, by the way, nothing less than the best effort will be good enough. The alternative is playing out the string at Colgate and against a Lafayette team that would like nothing better than to cement a potential league championship by ending a losing streak in the stories series and kicking the feathers out of the Mountain Hawks.
Here's the preview capsule that will run in Saturday's print edition:

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