The feeling in the Georgetown locker room after their 28-3 loss to Lehigh was much different than after their last home game four weeks earlier. Then, the Hoyas celebrated their first victory under new Head Coach Kevin Kelly and were poised to make a hopefully successful three-game road trip. Now, they find themselves in the middle of a four-game losing streak after the Mountain Hawks spoiled their return home to the Yard.
For the Hoyas it was a familiar foe striking at the most inopportune times: the turnover. Second half turnovers caused the team to self-destruct and gave the momentum to Lehigh. With Georgetown down 14-3 in the early part of the fourth quarter, the Hoyas took possession at midfield and put together a good drive, pushing the chains all the way down to the Mountain Hawk 23-yard line. But there, on second down, the ball squirted loose from junior tailback Erik Carter’s hands at the 15 and Lehigh’s senior Julian Austin recovered.
“That’s the story of our team right now,” junior quarterback Matt Bassuener said of the turnovers. “We just have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. It sounds like a broken record. We say that to you guys every week, but that’s the case.”
The Mountain Hawks then proceeded to glide 93 yards, ending the drive with Marques Thompson rushing untouched for a five-yard touchdown run. The bowling ball-esque Thompson finished the day with 122 yards rushing and two scores.
“Our offensive line was making holes,” Thompson said. “I just ran through them.”
With the hopes of a miraculous comeback in the backs of their minds, the Hoyas took the ball with 11 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter with an 18-point hole to dig themselves out of. Three plays in, though, Bassuener tried to connect with his tight end over the middle, and the pass was intercepted by junior defensive back Ernest Moore, effectively putting another bullet-hole in the pads of the G-men.
“I’m more to blame than anyone else,” Bassuener said. “It starts with the mistakes I made today. I fumbled early, and I got lucky on mine. We had our chances.”
Again, Lehigh’s junior quarterback Sedale Threatt and the Mountain Hawk offense took advantage of their field position and soared toward pay dirt with ease against a worn-out Georgetown defense. Thompson started the drive with a 24-yard run up the sideline, but their drive was halted by self-inflicted mistakes of their own.
Two false start penalties pushed Lehigh back to the Georgetown 15-yard line, but as a verbal leader on the squad, Threatt was undaunted. He focused in on senior fullback Greg Fay for a 10-yard pick up and then gave way to Thompson who plunged into the end zone for another five-yard score, putting the game out of reach.
“I’m looking at this right now, and it’s so sloppy,” Lehigh Head Coach Andy Coen said as he looked at a pink sheet of paper covered with a summary of the game’s penalties. “But the best thing that we did was at the end we overcame those two penalties.”
The redundancy of self-imposed mistakes was the source of noticeable frustration for all the Hoyas after the game. “There’s positives there, but it’s starting to get old,” Kelly said with a sigh. “If we build on it and eliminate those fourth quarter mistakes, then we have a chance to win that ballgame.”
One of those positives was the play of senior defensive end and captain Alex Buzbee who was in the face of Threatt all game, amassing seven tackles including two for a loss. He’ll try and lead his team toward their first Patriot League victory of the year against the Bison of Bucknell.
“The thing is this game is like a roller-coaster. When things are going good, when we have playmakers making plays, it’s easy to do well,” Buzbee said. “When you hit the low spots, it’s how you react to those. That’s what makes you a good team. It’s how you react to adversity.”
