#7 Lehigh Hosts #22 Rutgers at 1 p.m

[ngineer]

Surprising Red Knights of the Raritan invade Lehigh's Stabler Arena in little over an hour. They have risen in the polls after a nice win over American U. this past week. Eight of the ten weight classes should be highly competitive and one of the feature bouts will be at 285 with Lehigh's #5 ranked Rey facing #10 ranked Russo. The Ciasulli/Melde match at 141 should also be tight, as Melde upset Ciasulli at The Midlands in late December.

[ngineer]

In what was expected to be a tense dual meet, turned into a blowout as the Mountain Hawks rolled over the Scarlet Knights, 28-3. Going in, I had Lehigh favored in 4 weights, Rutgers in 2 and four toss ups. Lehigh' s only loss was one of the toss-ups at 157. Meanwhile unheralded John MacDonald at 125 (9-11) knocked off #21 Langel, 5-4, to start off Lehigh's surge. At 141, #17 Seth Ciasulli got revenge against #24 Trevor Melde, who had beaten Ciasulli at The Midlands in December. The other slight upset was freshman Joe Napoli beating #33 Dave Greenwald, 4-2. At that point, Lehigh lead 12-0, and the handwriting was on the wall.

Rutgers came in with a 15 match unbeaten streak (with only a 16-16 tie with Michigan State being the only blemish since December 12). Total recap of results at www.lehighsports.com

Lehigh now 15-3-1 on the season, closes out regular season at Penn Sunday afternoon at the Palestra in Philadelphia. The "Easterns" (EIWA) Tournament will be held March 6-7 at Lehigh hosting the 15 teams of the conference hoping to qualify as many as possible to NCAA in Omaha.