Nov. 4, 2011

Center Valley, Pa. - Kevin Higgins helped push Lehigh's program to its status as the most accomplished in Patriot League history by leading the Mountain Hawks to four championships in his seven seasons at the helm. He directed Lehigh title teams in 1995 and in three straight years from 1998-00.

Lehigh Head Coach Kevin Higgins (1994-00)

Overall Record: 55-24-1
Patriot League Record: 30-9
Patriot League Titles: 4 (1995, 1998, 1999, 2000)
Now: Higgins is in his seventh season as the head football coach at The Citadel in 2011. Between his stints at Lehigh and The Citadel, Higgins was a position coach in the NFL with the Detroit Lions.

Q and A

Patriot League: You took over at Lehigh after a strong season in 1993. After finishing at .500 in 1994, you won your first Patriot League title in 1995. What was special about that first Patriot League Championship team?

Kevin Higgins: First of all it was us taking over the program in 1994, and then our guys worked extremely hard that summer to change attitudes and give our guys the vision for winning a championship. The special about that season was that our quarterback Bob Aylsworth turned out to be an excellent leader. In 1994 he was struggling as a player, and we had conversations as to whether he should be the guy for us. He did an adequate job in 1994 and came back and gave us tremendous leadership in 1995 and helped us win a lot of games. The special moment was the Lafayette game and when I think about that game I still get goosebumps because of all that took place during the course of the game from the lateness of it with the overtimes and the darkness, it just went back and forth. I can even remember us having to make the critical decision to punt the football with less than four minutes to go and if they drove it and got a couple of first downs they would have won. We forced a fumble on the punt to get the ball back, which enabled us to drive and score and get the game to overtime.

Patriot League: You took over at Lehigh after a strong season in 1993. After finishing at .500 in 1994, you won your first Patriot League title in 1995. What was special about that first Patriot League Championship team?

Kevin Higgins: First of all it was us taking over the program in 1994, and then our guys worked extremely hard that summer to change attitudes and give our guys the vision for winning a championship. The special about that season was that our quarterback Bob Aylsworth turned out to be an excellent leader. In 1994 he was struggling as a player, and we had conversations as to whether he should be the guy for us. He did an adequate job in 1994 and came back and gave us tremendous leadership in 1995 and helped us win a lot of games. The special moment was the Lafayette game and when I think about that game I still get goosebumps because of all that took place during the course of the game from the lateness of it with the overtimes and the darkness, it just went back and forth. I can even remember us having to make the critical decision to punt the football with less than four minutes to go and if they drove it and got a couple of first downs they would have won. We forced a fumble on the punt to get the ball back, which enabled us to drive and score and get the game to overtime.

Patriot League: You mentioned Bob Aylsworth and you also had Phil Stambaugh and Brant Hall at the quarterback position. What did each of them bring for your team, especially as you became so well-known for being a prolific passing offense?

Kevin Higgins: Bob Aylsworth was a transfer that came in from Tulane and was a very, very gutty performer. He was smaller and had a very average arm, but he was a real competitior. He was a very good basketball player as well. He was part of our new regime and coaching staff, and new philosophy if you will. It wasn't always easy for him to change over and adapt but he did a nice job of that.

Phil Stambaugh was a local guy. When we recruited him we thought he would be a good player but I remember saying that if he didn't make it as a quarterback he would be an excellent outside linebacker because he was tall, he wrestled in high school and was a tough kid. He came into his own early, had a very strong arm and was a gym rat who loved the game of football, which really made a difference.

Brant Hall was one of the purest throwers as we watched his high school tape. We were really excited to get him from Maryland. He really paid his duties because he was behind Phil for two years and really had a chance to learn from him, and when he finally had his opportunity in his first game against Wofford he really took advantage of it and did a great job.

Patriot League: Three players from your defense: Nick Martucci (1995-98), Ian Eason (1996-99) and Abdul Byron (1998-01) made the Patriot League Football 25th Anniversary. What did each of them mean to your program?

Kevin Higgins: I remember recruiting Ian Eason, it came down to Lehigh and Lafayette and Lafayette got into his home and he was pretty much set on going there. I had one last chance on a Sunday to drive over to New Jersey and visit with him and his family. In my mind he was the ideal Lehigh guy in that he was a very good student and excellent football player. He was a little bit undersized for a linebacker but he was one of those guys that had explosive hips, ran extremely well and had a nose for the football.

Nick Martucci was another local guy from Pius X, and New Hampshire had offered him a scholarship and I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to keep him from going there. We convinced him to stay home, and he came in really as a tight end and in the first game he started as a defensive end because we needed some help there. He turned out obviously to have an incredible career. He was a tough kid but very athletic for his size at 6-foot-5. He could move extremely well and had innate strength. He was a basketball player in high school as well, and that's one of the things we really tried to do was recruit those gym rats who would bring a competitive edge to the table.

Abdul Byron was a guy that we recruited from a prep school in New Jersey. I was really concerned at how he would acclimate to Lehigh because I knew it would be a different environment. That three we brought in three running backs and because of that we were able to move him over to the defensive side of the ball. He was an outstanding running back, and would have been a great Patriot League running back, but we needed him more on defense. He just had a nose for the ball and was quick, had good hands and was very athletic and explosive. He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. We put him back for kickoff returns and he got a sense of reading the offensive linemen on those returns, and did an excellent job.

Patriot League: In 1998, you went 12-1 overall and 6-0 in the Patriot League with a win in the postseason over Richmond. What did that postseason win mean for both the Lehigh program and the Patriot League?

Kevin Higgins: First of all we were going against one of the top teams in the country, Richmond was third or fourth at the time. That was a very talented team and some of those guys ended up on NFL rosters. I just remember the resiliency of those guys and the confidence that they had going into that game. I had a great feeling because of the character of the guys that we had. The only goal was to stay as close as we could going into the fourth quarter and then I felt we would have a chance. And sure enough we blocked an extra point at the end of the game which allowed us to kick the game-winning field goal in the final seconds to win. We had a great two-minute drive led by Phil Stambaugh and Ronald Jean, who had a big catch and run. We had a fourth-down throw to Deron Braswell which allowed us to kick that field goal to win the game. That was certainly one of the highlights of that era as it allowed us to go and play at Massachusetts in the next round.

Patriot League: The 2000 season was remarkably similar, with the same final record and a first-round playoff win at Western Illinois. What do you remember from that team?

Kevin Higgins: I was really surprised, because I didn't think in 2000 that we had as good a team as we did in 1998 or in 1999 for that matter, when we had a good football team that unfortunately lost to a very good Colgate team on the road. We weren't as good in 2000 on paper, but because of the success in 1998 and 1999 those guys thought that they were a lot better than they were. Brant Hall stepped up in his first year and played like he was a third-year guy. He made some incredible plays throwing the football and with his feet. We were able to do some things differently game-plan wise because he could run the ball and Phil Stambaugh wasn't really a movement type of game. In all of those seasons you remember the Lafayette game because they were so special, but then getting the chance to go to Western Illinois. In the pre-game warm-up all of their players had stood on the 50-yard line and were taunting our players, and I remember saying to myself that is probably not very smart by those guys. They were a team that had several guys go on and play in the NFL, and we physically dominated them which was an incredible thing to do.

Patriot League: During your time at Lehigh, what do you feel was so special about your rivalry with Lafayette?

Kevin Higgins: When I took over, I was given one bit of advice. "Beat Lafayette." Without even hearing that I knew the magnitude of the rivalry. It was one of the most special things at Lehigh to be able to play in a game like that. Our first year in 1994 Lafayette hammered us at their place, and we went back and had a team meeting in our locker room after the game and vowed that would never happen again. We arrived in training camp that next year and had signs up that said Beat Lafayette, and had a certain portion of our practice devoted to beating Lafayette as well. That was what we drove into our players from the moment they arrived on campus, that we were going to beat Lafayette that season.

Patriot League: In your time as both an assistant and head coach at Lehigh, how did the Patriot League change and remain the same over the years?

Kevin Higgins: Holy Cross was such a dominating presence when I was an assistant coach in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and when they came into the Patriot League and the scholarships dissolved they kind of came back to the pack. But everybody at that point was trying to be the next Holy Cross. When they dropped scholarships there was so much more parity among all of us. Bucknell, Colgate and Lafayette were all great programs at that time, so there was great competition among all the teams.

Patriot League: What has your experience been like in your time at The Citadel?

Kevin Higgins: We've enjoyed our time here at The Citadel and certainly it's a different place from most others because it is a military school, but it's not like Army, Navy and Air Force where our guys have to make a commitment. It's a state-run school as opposed to federal and we play in the Southern Conference with great competition each week. We play one major university, this year it's South Carolina, every year so we play against good teams.