Lehigh men’s basketball team will be staying in the area for its stretch run to end the regular season.
The Mountain Hawks play at Lafayette on Sunday afternoon and then have home games against Colgate next Wednesday night and Army West Point next Saturday night to wrap up the regular season.
Lehigh got its local stretch run off to a good start with a 74-55 home win over Navy on Wednesday night at Stabler Arena. It moved the Mountain Hawks to 9-2 this season at home.
“Fortunately, we’ve played well at home. And we expect to play well here,” Lehigh coach Brett Reed said. “We practice here. We take pride, not only putting on a Lehigh jersey, but having our community come out and support us and watch our product. I have every expectation that our guys would bring that type of pride and determination to the floor. And hopefully it will continue as we finish up the rest of the regular season. For our last four games, we don’t have to travel more than 20 miles. So, we have the opportunity to make a pretty solid push, get our feet underneath us and hopefully not only gain confidence by playing well, but also put ourselves in a position to be ready to compete at hopefully a pretty high level in the tournament.”
The Mountain Hawks moved to 15-11 overall and 9-6 in the Patriot League this season with Wednesday night’s victory. They are in sole possession of fourth place in the league standings, in position to host a league quarterfinal for the seventh time in eight years.
“It was a big win tonight,” Lehigh senior guard Austin Price said. “Navy is obviously ahead of us and we have a lot of fighting to do to get back up there so we can get some home games during the tournament. And tonight we just came out trying to build momentum for the tournament. We’re not really worried about the seeding and stuff. We just wanted to come out, build momentum into the tournament because we know we have to win three games in a row, regardless of where we’re seeded.”
Lehigh men’s basketball team rolls to win over Navy
Price scored 19 points to lead Lehigh on Wednesday night. Price and Lehigh freshman forward Pat Andree hit back-to-back 3-pointers to give the Mountain Hawks a 13-point lead with 11:43 remaining in the second half.
Andree, senior center/forward Tim Kempton and sophomore guard Kyle Leufroy each added 12 points for the Mountain Hawks.
Lehigh junior guard Brandon Alston was the fifth Lehigh player in double figures as he finished with 10 points.
Kempton, who was honored before the game for becoming Lehigh’s all-time rebound leader, had eight rebounds on the night.
“We’re definitely happy to be home, but we’re still fighting for what we put ourselves in at the beginning of the season. Obviously, we’re not having the season we wanted to have at the beginning. But there’s nothing we can do from here on out except try to win out all the way through the Patriot League championship and into the NCAA tournament. That’s only our goal right now. We can’t think about what we did previously. We have to come out every single game and just keep moving forward and keep getting every win,” Andree said.
The next stop is a noon Sunday game at Lafayette. The Mountain Hawks beat the Leopards, who are 8-18 overall this season, 75-68 on Jan. 21 at Stabler Arena.
“It’s a huge rivalry game. Every time you play a team that gets that motivated to play you, it’s hard to play them,” Andree said. “Like Army-Navy, every time we play Lafayette, we’re huge rivals, they want to play us. They don’t want to just compete with us. They want to beat us. We know them. We see them around. They’re not going to lay over. We just have to come out and be mentally and physically ready to play. And I think we will be.”
Josh Folck may be reached at jfolck@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshFolck.
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