Three points can make a big difference.
A drill that ends in one team winning by three. A scrimmage against another team decided by a three-point margin. And of course, a three-point loss to Holy Cross last year in the Patriot League Championship.
The number keeps coming back to the Lehigh men’s basketball team in subtle ways, but the loss doesn’t consume the team.
It can’t.
“Everyone has it in the back of their head,” senior Tim Kempton said. “We don’t have to say much about it, everyone knows what happened last year, even our freshmen know that.”
Kempton stressed it’s not overwhelming them. They’re not breaking out of every huddle thinking about the fact that they lost that game last season. It’s a new season.
Like last year, Lehigh was picked to finish first in the conference, and Kempton was picked to win Patriot League Player of the Year. As expected, this isn’t the only similarity to last season.
The Hawks want another shot at a league title.
“We were upset in that championship game, and that left a major sting on each and every one of us within this program,” coach Brett Reed said. “But that sting can turn into a hunger.”
That hunger will be put to the test soon.
“There’s definitely more pressure seeing that I’m a senior,” guard Austin Price said. “And we didn’t win last year, so it’s more pressure on us to win this year.”
As it did last year, Lehigh starts the season against a top team in the nation: No. 7 Xavier University. Xavier was a two-seed in last year’s March Madness tournament. And Lehigh has a bit of a history with Xavier. After the Mountain Hawks’ historic win over Duke in 2012, it was Xavier who knocked them off in the second round.
Lehigh doesn’t have a C.J. McCollum to lean on, but its roster should be a lot deeper that last year’s. It’ll return four of its five main starters, including Kempton, the two-time reigning Patriot League Player of the Year.
Price, junior Kahron Ross and sophomore Kyle Leufroy are all back, too. Reed said the starting lineup isn’t finalized and expects many guys will have chances to play meaningful minutes this year.
Injuries plagued the Lehigh roster last season, forcing two of its three freshmen to miss the entire year. But both of them — Caleb Sedore and Matt Holba — will be back in action for the start of this year.
The team also gets back junior Brandon Alston, who missed all of last year while recovering from a torn ACL. Reed said freshman forward/center Jack Lieb is the only player who’s dealing with a longer-term injury, but he should be back within a month or so.
“We’re in a much better place than we were last year, where we had multiple coaches playing every single rep in practice just to give us enough to play 5-on-5,” Reed said. “It was bad.”
However, six of the team’s 14 players have yet to play a regular season college game, four of whom are freshmen. The team is dealing with some inexperience.
Kempton said he’s tried to step into even more of a leadership role this year now and help coach some of the younger guys.
“We came back with a lot of talent, but our bench has a lot of guys who haven’t even played a college game yet,” he said. “Even though we have more depth than last year, we’re trying to get everyone to understand the work ethic that it takes to be at a college level, everything like that.”
Lehigh will start the season on the road in seven of its first nine games, including games against Yale, Robert Morris and Stony Brook, all of which the Hawks lost to last year. Lehigh’s first home game will be Nov. 20 against Princeton.
The Mountain Hawks open the season against Xavier on Friday at 7 pm. in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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