The Mountain Hawks will look to capture their first win of the 2014 season Saturday at 1 p.m. as they take on Yale University. Yale will have a fresh start against Lehigh, as this will be their first game of the season.
Lehigh lost a close game to James Madison University 31-28 in the season opener and fell short Saturday to a nationally ranked New Hampshire team 45-27. Lehigh will look to some upperclassmen to help get the team get on the right track.
Junior wide receiver Stefan Sansone thinks these two losses could benefit the team.
“Our team has learned a tremendous amount after our first two games,” Sansone said. “We have put those games behind us and look to improve in all three phases of the game.”
Along with Sansone, several other players are reflecting on the first two losses.
“Obviously losing is never a fun deal,” said senior left tackle Ned Daryoush. “However, it is important to remember that the season is young and that the games that really matter are still in front of us.” Daryoush has been a two-time All-Patriot League selection with second team honors as a sophomore in 2012 and first team honors as a junior last year. He hopes to rally up the troops for his senior year.
According to Daryoush, this is not the first time Lehigh has had to face a team playing in its first game.
“We have been in this very situation the past few years against Princeton as their first game of the season, so we do have experience dealing with it,” he said. Even though they have done it before, it is no small task for the Hawks.
“It is definitely difficult to game plan for a team with no current film, but our coaches do a great job predicting what they will do and look like given past film,” Daryoush said.
Sansone echoed what Daryoush had to say about the coaches preparation.
“We have full trust in them that they will put us in the right spots to get a win and they have trust in us to get the job done,” he said. Both players know that it takes more than preparation to win football games.
“We need to play together as one unit, limit the mistakes and build off each others’ plays,” Sansone said.
Daryoush also addressed the team play.
“As a team we need to come out strong out of the gates,” Daryoush said.
According to Daryoush, last week they didn’t seem to have that fire from the start of the game, and the team will look to rekindle this during this weekend’s game in New Haven, Connecticut before league play starts in two weeks against Bucknell University.
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