|
Horace Hargrove(Lehigh)
1.5 Lehigh(4-9) @ Fordham(4-7) -- L 77-61
1.9 Navy(5-8, 0-0) @ Lehigh(4-10, 0-0) -- W 82-64
1.13 Lehigh(5-10, 1-0) @ American(5-10, 0-2) -- L 76-68
1.16 Lehigh(5-11, 1-1) @ Bucknell(9-8, 2-1) -- W 63-49
With Campagna saddled with two quick fouls, the rest of the team defended well enough against all probability to keep the game close against Fordham. It didn't hurt matters that center Rohan Dyer, not generally noted for his offense, went for 15 points in the first half! All of that was rendered moot by the fact that nobody could do much of anything right the last 12 minutes or so, and Fordham surged to a comfortable win scoring 47 in the final 20 minutes. A home game against Navy was the Patriot opener. A good first-half run opened up a 15-point lead and they had enough firepower to make it stick. It was a fun game -- it's not every day that Lehigh puts 80 on the board. All five starters contributed with at least ten.
It almost seemed like they needed to get that spat of quality play out of their system, starting off against American by treating the game as a foul-a-thon and missing bad shots like crazy to go with it. It was still close into the second half and they later ralled from 18 down to make a game of it, but there was never any consistency to the effort. Lindsay Powell(30 pts, 8 reb) won a guard duel with Tommy Campagna(23 pts, 6 rebs) in a matchup of two of the top players in the league.
Bucknell for some reason decided to take the next game as their opportunity to play like crapola. As in, 16-points-in-the-first-half-on-20% shooting-crapola. Which was just fine with Coach Hargrove. Lehigh's lead reached 20 points with 11 minutes to go, and it was pretty much paperwork at that point. Campagna scored 18 and with this gift accepted, Lehigh set a season mark allowing less than 50 for the first time.
Synopsis -- 330 RPI
A lot of uncertainty and up-and-down lately for Lehigh, which is far preferable to losing six straight and nine of 11 as they did in a stretch culminating with the Fordham loss. The computers consider them one of the worst teams in the nation, yet early in the Patriot schedule they are 2-1. Everybody has already lost at least once and only Navy is still looking for a win, so it's too early to tell really at this point who is going to challenge in the league. The emphasis on being more balanced on offense and having Good direct things more does seem to have improved consistency on that end. The good news is that lots of other Patriot teams don't know how to score either. At the moment Lehigh ranks 4th in the conference both offensively and defensively, with rebounding(7th) remaining their achilles heel.
|