Villanova Holds Off Lehigh After Racing to 21-0
Villanova scored 21 points in the first half and three in the second. Lehigh outscored the Wildcats 18-3 after the break and still lost 24-18.
The first half was Villanova's. Pat McQuaide ran in from 7 yards in the first quarter, Isaiah Ragland added a 14-yard run at 8:04 of the second, and Ja'briel Mace scored from a yard out with 2:45 left in the half. That made it 21-0, and Lehigh had not scored.
The Mountain Hawks needed a half to get going, and then they got going. Luke Yoder ran in from 5 yards midway through the third, Connor Poole kicked a 34-yard field goal, and Derek Morgan's 6-yard touchdown run with 8:28 left, plus a two-point conversion run by Anthony Feaster, cut it to 21-18. Dominic LeBlanc's 27-yard field goal for Villanova with 3:33 left made it 24-18, and nobody scored again. Villanova led from the first score to the last, but the final stretch was a lot closer than the first half.
The game was clean. Neither team threw an interception or lost a fumble. Lehigh ran 43 times for 238 yards and passed for only 134, finishing with 372 total yards to Villanova's 343, and Villanova sacked Lehigh three times to its none.
Lehigh got within three points after Morgan's score and never got closer than that, while the Wildcats' defense kept the Mountain Hawks out of the end zone in the final minutes.
Villanova improves to 4-3. Lehigh drops to 6-2. For fantasy, Luke Yoder's 132 yards on 20 carries led the way at 24.4 points, Morgan added 20.8 and Mace had 17.3 for the winners.