Soccer Fan Blog

Thankfully, another college football Saturday is nearly upon us. For the Patriot League, that means two big opportunities for marquee wins and home games for four of the six teams in action. It is the only weekend of the season without any League contests, but there is still plenty at stake.

To read the Patriot League preview release for the weekend, go here. As always, game notes, live stat, audio and video links are included in the preview, with the coverage links also available at the Patriot League composite schedule. We’ll have updates following both the afternoon and evening contests here at the blog, and score updates at the Patriot League Twitter page throughout the day. Go to www.patriotleague.org at the end of the night for a full League recap as well as institutional recaps and box scores from all of the games.

With two ranked oppponents on the schedule, the Patriot League is receiving its fair share of attention from national outlets going into the weekend. Chuck Burton, a good friend and reporter for the League and all of the Football Championship Subdivision, selects No. 23 Holy Cross hosting No. 25 Harvard as the FCS game of the week in his College Sporting News article. The contest in Worcester is the only matchup between ranked opponents on the FCS schedule this weekend. However, Chuck does pick the Crusaders to go down, 34-31, and also thinks Lafyette and Fordham will lose at home. Guess we’ll have to prove him wrong! The predictions by Brett Kahn of The Sports Network are more to our liking: he thinks Holy Cross and Lafayette will both win at home. Interestingly enough, he has the Crusaders winning by the 34-31 final.

Lafayette beat then-No. 14 Liberty last season for the Patriot League’s first win over a non-League ranked opponent since 2005, so getting two such victories would obviously be huge this week. Along with the ranked games, the matchups with the Ivy League highlight the schedule. In addition to Holy Cross’ matchup with Harvard, Fordham hosts Columbia, Georgetown hosts Yale, Bucknell goes to Cornell and Colgate visits Dartmouth. Patriot League teams have gone 9-9 each of the last two seasons against the Ancient Eight, so this series between like-minded conferences bears watching again.

As always, enjoy the games and come here to the blog and the other Patriot League media outlets for wall-to-wall coverage throughout the weekend. And since every game is a non-League affair, we can really say “Go Patriot League!” for the entire weekend!