Coming into this season, junior quarterback Nick Shafnisky had thrown 38 or more passes just once in his Lehigh career. This season, he’s already done that three times.
Shafnisky threw a career-high 47 passes after Lehigh couldn’t establish the run game as the Mountain Hawks fell to Yale University 27-12 Saturday at Goodman Stadium.
While Shafnisky ran for 79 yards on 20 carries, the rest of the team failed to run the ball effectively, forcing a high volume of passes. The rest of the team combined for just 8 yards on 11 runs.
“(It was) not a good day today at all, particularly offensively,” coach Andy Coen said. “Yale really dominated the line of scrimmage in my opinion, put a lot of pressure on the quarterback, they were not allowing us to really get anything going in the run game at all.”
Despite the loss, sophomore wide receiver Troy Pelletier turned in his third straight 10 catch, 100-yard receiving game, bouncing back from his early-season struggles and an injury. He finished with 10 grabs for 104 yards, the second year in a row surpassing the century mark against Yale.
While Lehigh struggled to run the ball at all, the Bulldogs were running all over the field. Backup running back Deshawn Salter touched the ball 29 times on the ground and racked up 233 yards and two touchdowns. Coen said after the game that the team’s inability to stop him really hurt their chances of winning the game.
“I think we didn’t play terrible as a defense today, but obviously 27 points is unacceptable,” senior linebacker Noah Robb said.
Lehigh was shut out in the first half, trailing 13-0. However, Lehigh came out swinging in the second half and drove right down the field on its first drive of the game, cutting score to 13-7.
“It just seemed like everything was clicking, we were moving the ball fast and up-tempo, and we just stayed on track,” Shafnisky said. “Like coach (Drew) Folmar always says, you want to get four or five yards on first down, and we did that on pretty much every play that drive.”
Injuries already have left the Mountain Hawks shorthanded after losing senior captain and wide receiver Stefan Sansone for the season in last week’s game. Saturday, the injuries continued to pile up.
Senior defensive back and captain Olivier Rigaud missed the entire second half due to an injury, and junior linebacker Colton Caslow missed part of the second half after getting hurt making a tackle.
Coen noted that there were some positives in the game, but like last week, they kept being countered by negatives shortly after. He pointed out one particular play where Lehigh got a big first down, only for it to be negated by a penalty.
“We were able to play at a high level, and the kids performed,” Coen said. “And we were coming out and the next drive, we get the ball and we hit Drew (Paulsen) for a 20 or 30 yard play that gets called back for a penalty.”
The Hawks will begin league play on the road next week against Bucknell University at 1 p.m.
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