Schedule Previews: St. Francis

With the official list of the incoming freshmen now out, it's time to focus on the 2016 schedule.

And the best place to start is with first-ever opponent St. Francis University, as Columbia will play the Red Flash in the season opener at home on September 17th.

St. Francis is located in Loretto, PA about about midway between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. The school is tiny, with just more than 1,800 undergrads. Only about 730 of those undergrads are men, so the football team makes up well over 10% of the entire male undergraduate population. (By contrast, Columbia would have to have well over 400 players on its football team to represent 10% of the total male undergrad population at the College, Engineering, and School of General Studies).

About a third of the team is extremely locally-grown and from the general Central Pennsylvania area. The states of Ohio and New Jersey are well represented on the roster too.

On the field, the Red Flash seems like a pretty good opponent. They went 6-4 last year with blowout wins over Georgetown, East Tennessee State, and Wagner, and some guttier wins over Central Connecticut State, Robert Morris, and Sacred Heart.

The Red Flash's starting QB from last year, Zach Drayer, is back. Last season the pocket passing Drayer put up very good numbers, completing 61% of his passes for 1,977 yards, 15 TD's and 9 INT. He had his best game in one of his teams most impressive wins, the 23-14 win over Sacred Heart where he completed 65% of his passes for 291 yards, two TD's and one INT. Drayer also does most of the punting, and had a decent 35-yard average last season.

Leading 2015 rusher Khairi Dickson has graduated after rushing for 1,003 yards and eight TD's last year. But junior Marcus Bagley is back after notching three 100+-yard rushing games last year, including 272 combined yards rushing on 31 carries in the first two games of the season.

The receiving corps has been absolutely gutted by graduation. The top four players in 2015 receiving yards are all gone, leaving sophomore Kamron Lewis as the most proven veteran even though he only had 11 catches last season for 107 yards and no TD's.

The best news for the Red Flash is the fact that four starters return on an excellent offensive line, including three All-NEC players. With an O-line like this, St. Francis can do lots of damage.

On defense, 1st Team NEC DB Lorenzo Jerome is back. Jerome is also a lethal kick returner and was named an All American at that position by Stats FCS.  James averaged more than 31 yards per kickoff return, including a 99-yarder for a TD and one other TD. Also back is monster Nose Tackle Wesley Nagaseu, a 310-pounder and All NEC selection. Nagaseu's fellow Hawaiian LB Solomon Leaeno is back after notching 12.5 tackles for a loss and four sacks last season. Junior DL Luke Weiss had a strong 2015 as well.

Placekicker Lance Geesey is yet another 1st Team All NEC player coming back for the Red Flash. He hit 94% of his field goal attempts last year, including a long of 46 yards.

Bottom line: this is a very good looking team and certainly isn't much of a downgrade from Fordham. But hey, bring 'em on!

Class of 2020 Names Officially Released

Michael Murphy


The athletics website has now officially released the names of the incoming new football players for 2016.

39 new names appear on the roster, leaving me two short of the 41 I had reported. But one "missing" player did Tweet he was joining the team. That was Christian Boujaoude. I do not know why he's not on the roster yet.

So who's our one truly "missing" player?

That would be speedy WR Will Ontiveros. I'm not sure if he has declared for another school or anything like that. His Twitter feed is quiet on the subject.

Also "missing" is any news on transfers, so I have to guess that there will be no transfers this year. It's not like we were promised any transfers, so we can't say we're disappointed.

Now that the list is official, I will have my LionFeeders database of all the documented players coming to Columbia football and their high schools updated later today.

I like a tremendous amount of these incoming players. I had a hard time choosing 3-4 guys to talk more about, so I decided to go with ten, (and I could have done a lot more).


WR Josh Wainwright

A flipped commitment from Northern Arizona to CU, so his college career starts with making a very good choice. Talent-wise, he's looking pretty good too.

DB Michael Murphy

A lot of recruiting experts were salivating over this guy. His dad played for Penn. 

DL Alex Robin

If you didn't KNOW I was going to cheer about a 280-pound DT from a competitive Alabama high school conference... well, you just don't know me at all.

RB Lynnard Rose

Another young man who made the good decision to go Ivy when he must have been under extreme pressure to stay home and follow the great family tradition at U. Houston. His dad is Lynden Rose of Phi Slamma Jamma fame. More importantly, Rose has good agility and quickness and the coaches seemed over the moon when he committed.

RB Tanner Thomas

Thomas was already committed to Columbia before he began a monster senior season with week after week of 150-yard-plus performances.

QB Matt Dame

Made news when he got an offer from University of Miami, but smartly spurned "the U." for the Ivy League. He's got a shot to make a lot of noise before he's done.

K Oren Milstein

I can't remember Columbia bringing in a more heralded kicker.

LB William McQuinn

An intriguing part of the team, and maybe can be technically called a transfer as he started out at the U.S. Air Force Academy last year.

DL Arman Samouk

Another very big D-lineman from good football country. You just can't have too many of those.

DL Michael Geraghty

A team captain from a national powerhous like Bishop Gorman is hard to ignore.

Waiting on an Official List

On Friday, the official Columbia Football Twitter feed helped 33 of the incoming football freshmen officially announce they were "joining the pride." Each of the players Tweeting had their images put on a virtual "baseball card" that looked pretty cool.

But that leaves seven players reportedly coming to Columbia who for some reason did not join the Friday Twitter party. And that's why I'm waiting on an official release from the athletics website to assess our actual incoming haul.

Princeton's Class

Kevin Davidson, (yes he looks mighty young)


Princeton has officially announced its class of 30 incoming freshmen.

The first thing that jumps out at me about this class is that includes six offensive lineman and a long snapper. I suspect that Head Coach and former O-lineman Bob Surace hasn't been happy with the overall results in that unit and he wants to start a reboot.


Alex Deters from the great St. Xavier HS may be the best of the incoming O-linemen. I assume

In my ongoing quest to single out promising big defensive linemen, Matt Hamson out of Pittsburgh looks pretty good for the Tigers.

WR Andrew Griffin also seems like a significant "get."

And QB Kevin Davidson is a possible future start.

Overall though, this Princeton class does not look as impressive as Penn's class or even as much of an upgrade-from-its-norm that Cornell's class appears to be.

Columbia, Brown, and Yale are now the only Ivy schools not to announce their freshmen and newcomers. But I don't expect Columbia to take more than another eight days to do so.

The Need for Speed

Kaleb O'Bryant


A good deal of the players offered by the Columbia coaches touring the country this month are fast. Netting one or two of them would certainly change the nature of the Lion offensive attack.

Here are some of the more recent offerees this week:

WR Kaleb O'Bryant from Cypress Creek HS in Houston, TX.

WR Dylan Greynolds from the famous Sidwell Friends HS in Washington, DC. That's where incoming 2016 freshman LinDon Harris is coming to us from.

WR Brandon Lewis from Madison HS in San Diego, CA.

DB Isaiah Richardson from Foster HS in Richmond, TX.

OL Jonathan Rowe from Ardrey Kell HS in Charlotte, NC.

TE Andrew Park from Lake Braddock HS in Burke, VA.

LB Logan Schaefer from Deltona HS in Delton, FL.