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The Holy Cross Crusaders and the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks will kick their respective seasons off Saturday at Goodman Stadium in a Patriot League showdown.
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The game (Noon ET start time) won’t be on TV, but anyone in the US can watch Holy Cross vs Lehigh football live on ESPN+ right here:
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Holy Cross vs Lehigh Preview
The Mountain Hawks finished 4-7 (3-3 in Patriot League) in 2019, and they averaged 15.7 points on offense while allowing 21.4 points a game on defense. Lehigh is hoping Toledo transfer Cross Wilkinson, who won the team’s quarterback competition, getting the nod to start over senior Addison Shoup, will give an anemic offense some heft.
“He’s a first year player who hasn’t played since his senior year in high school,” coach Tom Gilmore said about Wilkinson. “He’s a very talented football player, he’s very motivated, very intelligent. But he hasn’t played in a game in a long time.”
Still, all things considering, Gilmore was taken with how well and how quickly Wilkinson adjusted after arriving from Toledo amidst a global pandemic.
“Even with that he has endeared himself to the team very quickly,” Gilmore added. “He’s a tremendous young man. Performance counts and you could tell from the get-go that he had the talent to do what we wanted him to do. There was a very spirited competition between him and two others for the job and I still think you’re going to see Addison Shoup on the field on Saturday. I can’t guarantee that, but I am pretty sure that’s going to happen. But the ceiling for Cross is very high.”
On the other side, defending conference champs Holy Cross finished 7-6 back in 2019, also racking up a 5-1 mark in the Patriot League. Quarterback Connor Degenhardt returns under center for the Crusaders this season, which will be his last. Degenhardt went 182-341 for 2,372 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2019, and he also had five rushing scores.
On defense, Holy Cross had the stingiest unit in the conference, allowing just 15.2 points per game. The Crusaders have eight starters returning on that side of the ball, with senior defensive lineman Benton Whitley and sophomore linebacker Jacob Dobbs two of the team’s most staunch defenders back.
“We’re excited for the opportunity,” Holy Cross head coach Bob Chesney said. “We will be in a game and there will be contact for the first time in a while. There will be situations where coaches will make mistakes and players make mistakes, and there will be situations where coaches make unbelievable calls and players make unbelievable plays. A lot will exist in the middle. I think the team that is the most intact, the team that is most situationally sound, schematically competent and fundamentally sound is the team that will have the chance to win.”