Did You Know?

The Patriot League Champion Lehigh men’s basketball team earned a #15 seed in the South Region and will face second-seeded Duke in an NCAA Second Round Game, Friday in Greensboro, N.C. Tipoff is set for 7:15 p.m. on CBS with Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and Tracy Wolfson on the call.

But did you know…

• The Mountain Hawks are making the school’s fifth NCAA Tournament appearance and second in the last three seasons.
• This #15 seed marks Lehigh’s highest seed in the NCAA Tournament in the Patriot League era.
• The Mountain Hawks stand at 26-7 overall, riding an eight-game winning streak into the tournament.
• Lehigh and Duke have played four times in their history, with the Blue Devils winning all four matchups. The most recent came in 1996-97, on the road. 
• Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's first-ever victory came against Lehigh on Nov. 28, 1975 when he was leading Army.
• Lehigh junior Cory Goodman played with former Duke star Gerald Henderson in high school at Episcopal Academy.
• Another one of their teammates was UNC star Wayne Ellington.
• Lehigh basketball coach Brett Reed is the only head coach in the tournament with a doctorate degree. He owns the most victories by a Lehigh head coach, winning more than 75 percent of his games at Stabler. His 60.0 career Division I winning percentage is tops among active Patriot League coaches.
• Reed’s teams have produced APR (Academic Progress Rate) scores of 1,000 every year, which is 100 percent academic progress towards a degree.
• Enterprising Lehigh economics students have gained a cult following and international media attention for their “Freakanomics”-style blog, Centives. They place the Mountain Hawks’ chances against Duke at higher than the 3.7 percent historic figure for a 15 vs. 2 seed, at 20 percent.
• In a bracket based on academics, Inside Higher Ed has Lehigh coming out of the South Region and playing Davidson in the Final Four.
  In a bracket based on starting median salary, the Mountain Hawks would win the National Championship defeating Harvard in the Title Game.
• Lehigh is third in the nation in free throw percentage (77.6), 17th in scoring margin (11.1), and 24th in turnover margin (3.1).
• Forget what you know about smaller conferences: Lehigh boasts an RPI of 91 (as of Friday, Mar. 11).
• Look out for C.J. McCollum, the nation’s 5th leading scorer averaging 21.9 points per game, 2nd among players who qualified for the NCAA Tournament behind Creighton’s Doug McDermott.