Lehigh Advances to the NCAA Tournament After Winning First Patriot League Championship Since 2012

By: Ethan Hennessy

Bethlehem Pennsylvania

In front of an announced crowd of 4,223 #2 Lehigh and #4 Boston met Wednesday night in the Patriot League title game in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The winner would earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The two teams were fairly even through the first twelve minutes of the game. Lehigh led 23-22 at the under-eight media timeout. Lehigh’s Nasir Whitlock, the leading scorer in the Patriot League, got off to a slow start offensively only making one of his first five shots. Every time Lehigh began to pull ahead Boston had an answer. The Terriers did not want to let the Stabler Arena crowd get too excited. Lehigh however, did get the lead out to ten late in the first half thanks in large part to the scoring from their guards who started finding the bottom of the net. Boston shot uncharacteristically poor in the first half from three. The Terriers who had the highest three-point field goal percentage in the season and finished with over 110 more made threes than the second-place team Colgate only connected on one of nine shots from deep. The Mountain Hawks took a 41-30 lead into halftime.

In the second half Lehigh maintained their eleven point advantage through the first seven and a half minutes. The Mountain Hawks seemingly did not have much trouble scoring on the Terrier’s defense. Down fifteen with a little over five minutes to play Boston substituted out their center Ben Defty and went with a small lineup. They did  similar thing at Navy in the semifinal game. Having only made one three pointer in the game up to that point they had to begin scoring and quickly. Lehigh began taking the shot clock down all the way hoping to drain as much time as possible on their offensive possessions. In the end Lehigh won decisively 74-60 as the fans stormed the court at Stabler Arena. Lehigh will advance to the NCAA Tournament as the Patriot League representative. This is the first time the Mountain Hawks are going dancing since 2012. They will find out their matchup and location on selection Sunday.