PECKVILLE There's no denying that the Northwestern Tigers battled their way through every game this season and their 35-27 loss to Dunmore in the PIAA playoffs was no different. The Bucks were unable to gain any true knockout punch, since every time they thought they had delivered one, the Tigers would come back to deliver a blow of their own.

Dunmore (12-1) opened the scoring with a 54-yard touchdown run from Sal Marchese and immediately went for a two-point conversion with a toss to running back Colin Holmes off the left end and went up 8-0. The Tigers opened their next drive on their own 37 and a simple handoff to Harry Hall became a 63-yard touchdown turn and Brandon Miller's point-after cut the lead to 8-7.The two teams traded long drives in the second quarter and each capped the drives off with solid runs. For Dunmore, Holmes ran in from five yards out and the Tigers capped their drive with Cam Richardson going 11 yards for the score. Dunmore missed their point-after attempt and the two teams went into the locker room tied at 14.Northwestern faced a fourth-and-one from their own 39 on the opening drive of the third quarter when Richardson coughed up the ball, which was scooped up by Dunmore's Garrett Murray, who was able to run 30 yards down the sideline and put Dunmore up 21-14. Again though, Northwestern wasn't about to go down for the count and came right back with a strong drive to tie the game. Once again, it was Richardson with an impressive run that put Northwestern in the end zone from 19 yards out.On the next drive for Dunmore, Dylan Snyder came up with a big hit on Murray and Northwestern's Joe Colucci recovered the ball at the Dunmore 31. Again, the ground game kicked in and it would be Richardson scoring from four yards out, but the extra point was blocked, leaving the Tigers up 27-21. Just when it looked like Northwestern might have taken the upper-hand, the Bucks were the ones coming back with a big drive and Marchese made a nice dancing move at the line and went four yards to tie the game. John Capooci nailed the point-after and the Bucks were up 28-27."Fourth and about six inches, the way the game was playing out, I trust my guys and it just wasn't there," explained Northwestern coach Josh Snyder about the turn of events. "I'm not sure he would have gotten it [the first down] anyway, but they wouldn't have gotten the six on the scoop-and-score, but we battled right back and went right down to the wire,"Dunmore put together a 17-play, 69-yard drive early in the fourth quarter that took over seven-minutes off the clock in the fourth quarter. As they zeroed in on the end zone, it would be Marchese who would fight through the middle of the line for the final score of the game.Northwestern had a final drive in them and they got an adrenaline boost when Harry Hall ran for a huge 16 yard gain and after that, on a fourth-and-six play, Frank Dangello hit Richardson to extend the drive. Shortly after that, however, the Tigers took a shot at the end zone, but Dangello's pass came up a little short of Richardson and was intercepted by Murray right at the goal line with less than a minute remaining.Marchese then broke free for 61 yards on a first down run. From there, Dunmore was able to take a knee and start celebrating.From the film that Snyder and his coaching staff saw on Dunmore, they knew they would be a physical team and that they had the best running attack they had faced all season. Dunmore features two backs - Marchese and Holmes - who both rushed for over 1,000 yards this season and they both went for over 100 yards against the Tigers, who hadn't allowed a running back to gain 100 yards all season."They went unbalanced a lot, they shifted, they went in motion, they went backside, they went strong side, they double-trapped the heck out of us tonight and it's tough to make adjustments on the fly when you've got a team motioning and stuff like that," said Snyder. "We battled like crazy. You have to credit Dunmore, they're big, they're physical and you have to credit what they were doing on offense."Snyder says goodbye to a group of seniors who took over as starters in his first year as coach in 2012 and helped turn the program around. In Snyder's first season, the team finished 3-7, but turned that into a 7-3 record and an Eastern Conference Championship last season."These guys are my first kids and they came in as puppies in ninth and tenth grade, not knowing how to win football games and we just tried to turn the culture around and the philosophy and they just bought in 100-percent and just trusted in us," said Snyder. "I didn't want it to end, because they're not only great football players, but a tremendous group of kids in general."