The sun was setting to the west late Saturday afternoon at Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium as a brilliant November day came to a close.
The picturesque scene looked a lot better to the Lehigh football team, its administration, alumni and fans than it did to the host Leopards.
That’s because in a highly-anticipated game that lived up to its billing, Lehigh completed a 12-0 regular season and won its second straight Patriot League and 14th overall with an entertaining 42-32 win over Lafayette in the 161st edition of college football’s most-played rivalry before a sellout crowd of 13,367 at Fisher Stadium.
Junior running back Luke Yoder was a near-unanimous choice as the game’s MVP after rushing for 234 yards and four touchdowns. His performance offset a huge day by Lafayette’s Kente Edwards, who ran for 157 yards and three scores.
The victory ensured Lehigh will return to the FCS playoffs for the second year in a row. The Mountain Hawks, who entered the game as the No. 4-ranked team in the country, will find out their potential opponent at noon Sunday during a selection show on ESPNU.
Lehigh is expected to receive a first-round bye and host a game on Dec. 6. It would be the Mountain Hawks’ first home playoff game since 2001. Lehigh beat Richmond in the first round of last year’s 24-team tournament before losing at Idaho.
Lafayette finished its season at 8-4, 6-1 in the league.
“I’m just proud of our program,” said third-year Mountain Hawks coach Kevin Cahill. “I’m proud of our team, our players, our staff, our alumni, our university. The kids did a great job representing Lehigh today in a positive way. We just stuck with a plan and kept going.”
The plan, of course, wasn’t to trail at halftime for the first time all season as Lafayette took a 17-14 lead into the locker room at intermission.
The only other time Lehigh wasn’t ahead at the break was in the season opener against Richmond, when it was 7-7 at halftime.
But the Mountain Hawks didn’t panic. They just gave the ball to Yoder, who broke off an 80-yard run on Lehigh’s first play from scrimmage in the second half to take a 21-17 lead.
Yoder, from Palm Harbor, Florida, also scored on TD runs of 29, 3, and 6 yards. Quarterback Hayden Johnson threw a 77-yard TD pass to Mason Humphrey and also scored the game-clincher with 1:53 left.
Lehigh had to come back from 7-0, 14-7, 17-14, and 24-21 deficits.
They answered Edwards’ 1-yard TD run with 2:46 left in the third quarter with a go-ahead touchdown by Yoder with 48 seconds left in the third period.
Then in a game that was dominated by the offenses, the Mountain Hawks’ defense rose up to stop Edwards short on a fourth-and-1 at the Leopards 47. On the ensuing drive, Lehigh faced its own fourth-and-1 at the Leopards’ 28 and took a page from the Eagles playbook and used its version of the “Tush Push.” Johnson lined up in shotgun formation and then rushed to just behind center Colby Reph, a Northampton High product, and got a little push from behind by Yoder and went 22 yards to the Lafayette 6.
On the next play, Yoder scored in more conventional fashion, and it was 35-24 with 10:20 left.
“That’s the first time we’ve run it, and I don’t know who was on the headset, but one of the coaches said we probably should have run it more,” Cahill said. “That’s going to go down as an efficient play. They called for it, and O-line said, ‘We got it, we got it, we got it.’ We said upstairs, let’s just run it. The players wanted it, and you call what the players feel they can execute. We just did it. That was the players’ call, and the players executed it. Give them all the credit.”
Lafayette pushed back, however. The Leopards went 75 yards on eight plays and pulled to within 35-32 on Edwards’ third TD of the game with 7:14 left. Nazareth product Mason Kuehner, who had 11 catches for 99 yards, caught a 30-yard pass to get to the Lehigh 4 and set up the score. Kuehner then caught the two-point conversion pass.
But the Mountain Hawks put it away with a 10-play, 75-yard drive that consumed 5:21
“We were trying not to score, but score at the same time,” Cahill said. “Jaden Green made a little subtle play that goes unnoticed. He went down on his own before they got to the 2-minute warning so they had to use a timeout. We spend so much time working on plays like that. We needed to score, but they lost that had to use that timeout. It was just a smart play by Jaden. That was a Lehigh football drive, a great drive. That kept the defense off the field, and then we scored.”
Lafayette turned it over on downs with Lehigh taking over one last time and getting two kneel downs before beginning a celebration that was joyous, but without the tearing down of a goal post as happened last year at Goodman Stadium.
There was no mystery that Yoder was going to get the MVP award.
His 234 yards came on 19 carries and were the fourth-most for a single-game total in Lehigh history and the most by a Mountain Hawks’ player against Lafayette since Jack Rizzo ran for 313 yards in a 48-19 win over Lafayette in 1971.
“It feels great to hold this [MVP] trophy, but honestly, I wish everyone could hold this trophy,” Yoder said. “It goes out to everyone, starting with the O-line. It was a great team effort. I’ll shout out the whole offensive line — Charles Soska, Colby Reph, Aidan Palmer, Sammy Ayache, Langston Jones. And Mason [Humphrey] came in as a split tight end at times. It’s awesome having those guys up there. They are gritty guys who dent the line of scrimmage and make my job easier.”
Lafayette coach John Troxell was left disappointed, but credited Lehigh.
“We couldn’t get enough stops, but that’s a good football team,” he said. “Once we got behind, playing catch-up was difficult. I’m proud of the way our kids played. They played hard, and we’re still a young football team, and we still make young mistakes. At the same time, we’ve got young guys out there making plays like Mason Kuehner and Matthew Scerbo. We’ve got guys coming back and hopefully this fuels them for what lies ahead.”
Troxell said there were a couple of plays he’d like to have back, including an interception on an option pass by receiver Carson Persing, and not being able to get the first down at midfield in the fourth quarter.
“We’re not going to try to lose the game, we’re going to try to win it,” Troxell said. “I’m sure this was entertaining for people, and when you hear about Lehigh having a great run defense, we had a lot of success on the ground. They have a good defense, but we have a good offense. We controlled the time of possession [35:38 to 24:22], and some of that was their quick scores, but I think we wore their defense down a little bit. I just told our kids they have nothing to be ashamed of. They fought to the end and lost to a good football team.”
Lehigh vs. Lafayette football and Faces in the Crowd | PHOTOS
Scoring summary
Lehigh 7 – 7 – 14 – 14 — 42
Lafayette 7 – 10 – 7 – 8 — 32
FIRST QUARTER
LA: Kente Edwards 1 run (Jack Simonetta kick), 8:00
LE: Luke Yoder 29 run (Connor Poole kick), 4:46
SECOND QUARTER
LA: Dean DeNobile 2 run (Simonetta kick), 14:21
LE: Mason Humphrey 77 (Poole kick), 7:32
LA: Simonetta 21 field goal, 1:03
THIRD QUARTER
LE: Yoder 80 run (Poole kick), 14:42
LA: Kente Edwards 1 run (Simonetta kick), 2:46
LE: Yoder 3 run (Poole kick), 0:48
FOURTH QUARTER
LE: Luke Yoder 6 run (Poole kick), 10:20
LE: Johnson 1 run (Poole kick) 5:21
