Lafayette-Army notebook: Leopards will honor players' favorite vets

Lafayette Coach John Garrett said Tuesday that some teams that face Army West Point like to pay tribute to the Cadets and their service to the country in various ways. With this game also being played so close to Veterans’ Day, Anthony Martin, the equipment director at Lafayette, suggested one that may be the best yet.

Each Leopard was asked to select a relative or friend who has or currently does serve in the military. Players came up with photos of the persons they chose, and special decals were made from the photos and will be placed over the “L” on the side of the helmets for this game. After the game, the decals will be taken from the helmets, placed on backing, framed and given to the players as a memory of the game and of the person they chose to honor.

For example, offensive lineman Gavin Barclay said his two grandfathers served in the Army and he chose his father’s dad, who served in Vietnam from 1964-66; linebacker Major Jordan selected his father, who was in the Navy from 1985-89; and defensive lineman Harrison Greenhill selected his high school defensive line coach, who, he said, became a mentor and father figure to him and who had been a lieutenant colonel in the Marines.

Way to go, Anthony. And, God Bless America!

COACH GARRETT ON THE QUESTION: WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO PLAY ARMY, WHICH HAS 170 PLAYERS – ALL ON FULL SCHOLARSHIP – ON THE ROSTER? – “It’s a great challenge, a storied program, a great atmosphere. Sometimes it’s important to go through life with this attitude.: I want to do things for the inherent value of the experience. this is a great challenge to go so I played at Army, give it all I got … they bleed like anybody else and they’re not invincible. They’ve given up a lot of points; won some close games against teams they should beat. But we’re gonna give it everything we’ve got. It doesn’t matter who we play. We are just concerned about us. We’re thrilled to play Army. We like challenges. We like to go through life embracing challenges. And this is a great one for us on Saturday,”

ARMY COACH JEFF MONKEN ASSESSES HIS TEAM – “We’ve got to be trying to play our very best football at this time of the year. We’re well into the season and we made some mistakes (last) Saturday that frankly I don’t think we should be making at this time of the year, so, hopefully we will improve on those things and play better this week. We’ve got to continue to strive to be as close to perfect as we can. I think it’s probably impossible to play absolutely perfect. But if we don’t shoot for that perfection in our fundamentals and perfection in our assignments and all those things, we’ll be well short of it.”

HARRISON GREENHILL ON ARMY COACH JEFF MONKEN – “Coach Monken is a hard-nosed guy and it’s something you have to respect. He knows what he wants and he demands it out of his players. He’s not afraid to run up the score, but it’s our job to stop that from happening. We’re going to go out there and put our bodies on the line. We signed up to play this game. We had them scheduled. It’s inevitable. We’re at the point of no return. Just gonna go and get it done.”

COACH MONKEN ON FACING AN FCS OPPONENT – “It’s the same guys we’re playing with. We don’t have a room full of guys with four and five stars next to their name and who had 17 Power 5 scholarship offers they turned down to come here. We just got a bunch of guys who loved to play football, wanted to play football at the highest level an had an opportunity to come here. That doesn’t mean we don’t have some guys in this room that have scholarship offers; we do. But it’s a lot closer than people realize in terms of the ability level from FBS to FCS. There’s nothing really to indicate to us what we might see on Saturday.”

GREENHILL ON FAKE PUNT RUN VS. HOLY CROSS – “We practiced that play since the week after Delaware and we’ve had it in the playbook since then. Coach was looking for the right time to call it. So, when he called it, I was ready to go. He instilled a lot of confidence in me and I had a lot of confidence in the guys on the punt team as well that they’d make their blocks and get the outside guys. When I got the ball I let my instincts take over. I knew I needed to get the first down, but I got a little bit more than that and it was awesome.” He gained 26 yards on the play.

SOME INTERESTING STATS – Army West Point has elected to go for a first down on 32 fourth-down situations this season. The Cadets were successful 29 times – an amazing 91 percent.  … In a game against then-No. 5 Oklahoma, The Black Knights  piled up 87 offensive plays and 44:41 of possession while leaving the Sooners time enough for only 40 offensive plays. Andy Davidson of Emmaus ascored one of his two 2018 touchdowns with less than two minutes to go to tie the gtame at 21, but Oklahoma won it in overtime …  The Army defense has allowed just 100 yards per game rushing  and nine TDs. Opponents have scored 15 touchdowns passing against the Cadet … Army has allowed opponents to convert on third down on just 27.6 percent of the time … Lafayette’s defense has allowed third-down conversions 41 percent of the time …