A tale of two ballclubs
Since they did away with the men's-women's doubleheaders in the Patriot League this year, Andre Williams of the Morning Call didn't get a chance to pull off a double-double Saturday. But he did get to see both the teams he covers--Lehigh and Lafayette-- thanks to Lehigh's 7 p.m. start time against American.
Seeing both teams in action on the same day gave Andre a chance to compare and contrast them in his weekly hoops column. After watching both play within a span of hours, Andre wonders if Lafayette is a team on the rise, and if the leopards might end up surpassing a Lehigh team, whose stock is falling, at the end of the season.
We won't recap the whole column. That's why we provided the link. But we did find interesting a pair of quotes by the two coaches that would seem to indicate they feel the same way about their own teams as Andre does.
The first comes from Lafayette's Fran O'Hanlon:
Then there is Lehigh's Billy Taylor. His defending champions had high expectations with everybody back but Austen Rowlend and much-ballyhooed High Point transfer Joe Knight expected to step right into Rowlend's high-tops. But after losing two in a row, he sounds like a guy searching for answers to questions that should have been resolved long before the season's final week:
Sounds to us like Andre maybe got that old "May you live in interesting times" fortune cookie with his last egg roll.
Seeing both teams in action on the same day gave Andre a chance to compare and contrast them in his weekly hoops column. After watching both play within a span of hours, Andre wonders if Lafayette is a team on the rise, and if the leopards might end up surpassing a Lehigh team, whose stock is falling, at the end of the season.
We won't recap the whole column. That's why we provided the link. But we did find interesting a pair of quotes by the two coaches that would seem to indicate they feel the same way about their own teams as Andre does.
The first comes from Lafayette's Fran O'Hanlon:
"We just want to finish up strong, take them one at a time and just keep getting better. I think we've been doing that. It doesn't matter where you finish at this point. You are going to start over.''O'Hanlon sounds like a confident coach whose team has nothing to lose. A team with the same attitude can be dangerous in the postseason.
Then there is Lehigh's Billy Taylor. His defending champions had high expectations with everybody back but Austen Rowlend and much-ballyhooed High Point transfer Joe Knight expected to step right into Rowlend's high-tops. But after losing two in a row, he sounds like a guy searching for answers to questions that should have been resolved long before the season's final week:
''If we want to be a good team, time is running out as I continue to say. 'We have to do the little things and we have to play with a sense of urgency.''If both teams win Wednesday, they will meet twice in the following week. First in the regular season finale in Easton, and then in the first round of the league tournament at Bucknell.
Sounds to us like Andre maybe got that old "May you live in interesting times" fortune cookie with his last egg roll.
