HAMILTON – It was a great start and a near miraculous finish.
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But in between, Lehigh made the plays when they counted to escape with a 21-14 Patriot League victory over Colgate here Saturday afternoon.
Lehigh's winning score came on Zaythan Hill's 9-yard run with 33 seconds remaining.
The TD was set up when Colgate quarterback
Grant Breneman had the ball slip from his fingers while preparing to pass. Lehigh's Bartek Rybka fell on the loose ball at the Raider 39 with 1:06 showing, and the Mountain Hawks made quick work of their winning drive.
Colgate (0-6, 0-1 Patriot) then put together one last gasp for the tying score.
Starting at their own 34 with 29 seconds remaining, Breneman connected with
Alex Mathews,
Nick Draught and then Draught again to move the ball to the Lehigh 24. A pass interference call on the Mountain Hawks with 1 second remaining gave the Raiders a final try from the Lehigh 9.
Breneman rolled left and found
Garrett Oakey for the completion, but Lehigh's Divine Buckrham made the saving tackle at the 1-yard line to deny the Raiders their first win of the season.
Nick Wheeler posted a pair of sacks, the first of which caused a fumble in the Lehigh end zone. First-year linebacker
Prince Ekwughalu was on the spot and fell on the fumble for his first collegiate touchdown and a 7-0 Colgate lead.
Those were the first points in the first quarter and first lead of any kind for the 2019 Raiders.
Lehigh (2-3, 1-0 Patriot) tied it on Tyler Monaco's 19-yard pass play to Nate Hope on the opening play of the second quarter, only for Colgate to answer with a 70-yard, six-play drive capped by
Malik Twyman's 3-run run.
The Mountain Hawks scored with 18 seconds remaining before halftime on Monaco's 1-yard keeper to knot the score at 14 and set the stage for the late back-and-forth.
Bottom Line
• Lehigh 21, Colgate 14
From the Source
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Colgate head coach Dan Hunt: (On the game) "Besides a couple of big plays, the defense did what we needed them to do today. Offensively, we had a couple of nice drives early and then just couldn't run the ball. We got into obvious passing situations and it was another week where we didn't do a good job protecting the quarterback. Grant was not quite as mobile as he could have been but hopefully he's getting back there.
"At some point, offensively, we have to produce, and we're not doing that right now. I appreciate that we never gave up. We got the ball with 29 seconds to go and got it to the 1-yard line. It was good to see our kids make some plays.
"Something I talked to the team about after the game is I don't know if we're trusting ourselves to make plays. If we can get the quarterback enough time to get the ball near some of our receivers, they're going to catch it. He's got to trust it and we have to protect well enough to do that.
"If there's one positive to take from today, it's what they tried to do in the last 30 seconds."
"The defense, minus the 99-yard drive, really did a nice job. We put them in a bad spot with the fumble after they got us off the field with a minute to go. The sad thing is, Grant was about to get the ball to a guy for a pretty good-sized gain. The ball just slipped out of his hand. It happens. That's football, and that's the football gods. He's taking that pretty hard but he made a lot of good plays to keep things going too.
"We've just got to get better. We have to focus on just winning a game. Win one and see what happens. But that's hard; that's hard to do. We took it for granted, especially after last year. No one is going to feel sorry for us and I'm sure nobody wants to be the first team to lose to us.
"This is a good group of guys who are going to do the right things this week, and hopefully that will make for a better performance next week."
Stats of the Game
• Wheeler with his two sacks leapfrogged Pat Afriyie '17 into second place on the Colgate career chart with 27½. He needs one sack to tie Kelly Robinson '81 for the Raiders all-time lead.
• Wheeler posted two additional tackles for loss for a career-high four TFLs.
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Coleman Coco contributed 1½ sacks for his collegiate best (he shared one sack with Ekwughalu) and finished with three TFLs for another career high.
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Nicholas Ioanilli was the Colgate tackle leader with 13. He shared a key fourth-down TFL with Wheeler that turned the ball over to Colgate at the Raider 23 with just 1:22 remaining.
• After that turnover, Breneman hit
Garrett Oakey for 21 yards to the Colgate 44. Breneman then threw incomplete before he had the ball slip from his fingers and Lehigh recovered at the 39 with 1:06 left.
• Lehigh limited Colgate to 213 yards of total offense, including just 96 after halftime. Of those 96 yards, 65 came in the final 29 seconds on that last-gasp drive.
• Colgate's defense posted four sacks and Lehigh tallied seven. Because of Lehigh's seven sacks for minus-44 yards, Colgate finished the game with nine net rushing yards.
Gate Grab Bag
• Attendance for Homecoming at Crown Field at Andy Kerr Stadium was 3,838.
Up Next
• Colgate stays in the Patriot League for one more week, hosting Bucknell next Saturday.
• The Bison lost their conference opener Saturday at home to Holy Cross, also by a 21-14 count to fall to 0-5 overall.
• Kickoff from Crown Field at Andy Kerr Stadium is 1 p.m., with the Patriot League Network carrying the livestream. Catch the home play-by-play call from 94 WKXZ-FM.
