A LONG-AWAITED WIN
Leopards use two TD passes from Northrup to MVP Steven Stilianos
Lafayette College football coach John Garrett raises the trophy his team earned Saturday following a 20-13 victory over Lehigh in the 156th meeting of the two squads. College football’s longest rivalry, postponed in the fall during the pandemic and again last Saturday for a COVID-19 outbreak, was played before a thinned-out crowd at Fisher Stadium. Leopard quarterback Cole Northrup threw a pair of touchdown passes to game MVP Steven Stilianos to keep Lafayette out front.
By Keith Groller
The storied football rivalry between Lehigh and Lafayette has featured its share of inspiring “never give up” stories.
Add Cole Northrup’s tale to the list of feel-good memories from college football’s most played rivalry.
Northrup, a senior quarterback who was hurt and not able to play the last time the Leopards met the Mountain Hawks in November 2019, got his chance on Saturday and made the most of it.
He threw a pair of touchdown passes to Steven Stilianos, including a 30-yarder with 12 minutes, 11 seconds remaining that proved to be the game-winning score in Lafayette’s 20-13 victory over Lehigh at Fisher Stadium.
The win in meeting No. 156 was the second in a row for the Leopards in the
series and allowed them to finish an unprecedented Patriot League season with a 2-1 mark. They also extended their all-time series lead over Lehigh to 80-71-5 and beat Lehigh at Fisher Stadium for the first time since 2006.
“It was awesome, a dream come true,” said Northrup, a senior from St. Augustine, Florida. “When you get on this campus as a freshman, all you want to do is play in the Lehigh game. Having the opportunity to play against Lehigh with my teammates was surreal. It’s the best way to describe it.”
Lafayette coach John Garrett said he wasn’t surprised by Northrup’s performance.
“From the moment he walked on this campus, he was the right kind of guy,” Garrett said after the Leopards got their sixth win in their eight Patriot League games. “No matter his role as the quarterback, he brings great energy and effort and he’s prepared. He seized the moment this spring.”
Northrup, who was 22 of 34 passing for 257 yards without an interception, said the game-winning pass to Stilianos was “a little bit of a trick play.”
“We hid [Stilianos] as the right tackle,” Northrup said. “We’ve been throwing screens a couple of times during the game. We faked the screen and he rolled up on the go route and it was him against someone else and there’s no one in this league who can cover him one-on-one. He’s too big and physical for corners and too fast for linebackers. We gave him the opportunity to make a play and he came down with it. We practiced it all week and during the season. We had confidence in it. It was the right play at the right time.”
Stilianos, a junior tight end from Hayes, Virginia, said he was surprised to be voted the game MVP by the media.
“I guess the touchdowns kind of helped, but it was a total team effort,” he said. “Everyone played well and did their job. It’s a great feeling to celebrate on our home field with all my brothers.”
Of the game-winning touchdown, he said: “It was a one-on-one ball and it was just time to make a big play. I was lucky to come down with it.”
Lehigh finished 0-3 in the spring, but at least was able to get its first touchdowns in the abbreviated season — a 49-yard rushing score by Rashawn Allen and a 4-yard pass from Cross Wilkinson to Jorge Portorreal with 1:54 left in the third quarter.
But Lafayette answered with a short 45-yard scoring drive capped by the Northrup pass to Stilianos, the tight end’s fourth TD catch of the spring.
The rest of the game belonged to Lafayette’s defense, especially sophomore defensive tackle Damon Washington, who had four of his team’s six sacks including two on Lehigh’s final possession.
It was the defense that pinned back the Mountain Hawks at their own 6 and set up the game-winning drive.
“Our defense played well,” Washington said. “We were just running to the play, trying to make plays. The other D-linemen had great rushes as well. We just played our heart out.”
Washington knew Lehigh had a young offensive line that was affected by a variety of factors.
“Looking at them, we knew they were young up front,” Washington said. “It’s not that they have bad players, they’re just inexperienced, and we thought we could take advantage of their inexperience. That was our goal to get the matchups we wanted.” from a results standpoint,” Lehigh coach Tom Gilmore said. “But I’ve never been more proud of a group of guys I’ve been around in my life. These guys had a lot of adversity shoveled at them, a lot more than people knew. And not just the COVID-19 stuff that everyone’s going through, but much, more than that.”
Gilmore added that the shortage of available bodies made a tough task even harder.
“I don’t know how we even played these last two games,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the grit and the resilience and character of these players, we wouldn’t have pulled it off. We’re so shallow at a couple of positions that we even struggled to practice.”
Gilmore said his team had just six offensive linemen and six defensive backs in uniform.
“We had a quarantine situation in the middle of the week where we lost four guys,” he said. “And then with a couple more injuries, we were even more shorthanded. The credit has to go to our coaching staff for just finding ways to practice and to these players for how hard they fought, how they kept coming back. They’re going to kill it in life. They’re going to be highly successful people. And it will show on the football field.”
With the players who did play in all three games, Gilmore said he saw significant improvement.
“You saw improvement across the board from the first game to the last, but we were very mistake-prone and sometimes an inexperienced team is going to be like that,” Gilmore said. “I hope this experience will pay dividends this fall. I’m really excited about what I see from a talent standpoint and I’m excited to have another class coming in this summer. I’m really excited about the future of Lehigh football.”