Admittedly, it wasn't the best performance of the season from the Northwestern Tigers, but they were able to battle and come away with a key 28-21 win over Palmerton.

The victory keeps the Tigers in the driver's seat in the battle for a District 11 Class AA playoff berth. Northwestern is now 6-2 on the season and currently sits in second place in the battle for one of four playoff berths. The loss drops Palmerton to 4-4 and damages its hopes for a postseason berth.."It wasn't our best game, but I told our guys that the last three weeks of the season are where the champions come out to play," said Tiger head coach Josh Snyder. "I have to give a lot of credit to (Palmerton coach) Chris (Walkowiak) and his staff. They really kept us off balance and they got a couple of plays off of us."Palmerton showed a spread-wing offense, which they haven't used in a couple of seasons and Snyder credited that change with keeping his defense off-stride. The key for Northwestern was that when they did give up a big play, they would find a way to fire right back and keep the Blue Bombers from building too much momentum."I think it was a classic game, both teams battled their butts off," said Walkowiak. "The effort was there, the hustle was there, the pride was there. I can't be more proud of our effort. But we're not here for consolation prizes. We're here to win games."With the score 7-7 at the half, the Tigers went three-and-out on their first drive of the second half and punted the ball away to Palmerton. Blue Bombers' running back Mike Stasko was handed the ball on the first play of the drive and ran 69 yards to put Palmerton up 14-7.On the next drive for Northwestern, quarterback Dylan Snyder hit Trevor Cunningham on a second-and-11 play for a first down and then five plays later had a 20-yard run of his own to keep the drive going. Harry Hall's 11-yard touchdown run capped the drive and again knotted the score, this time at 14-14.Again, Palmerton brought the momentum back to their side, with an impressive 14-play drive, covering 69 yards. Quarterback Garrett Perschy hit two key pass plays on the drive and Mike Stasko barreled in for a three-yard touchdown run to put Palmerton up 21-14 with 11:14 to play in the game."At that point, we knew we needed to come right back at them," admitted Snyder. "Our guys made plays and did enough to win. They really had to gut it out, because those guys weren't going away. They played us hard every second."Thanks to a big kickoff return from Brett Schillinger, Northwestern only had to go 48 yards on its next drive, with Hall covering the yardage on three plays, including a 28-yard touchdown run. Northwestern got the deciding score when Dylan Snyder delivered a little shuffle pass to Joe Colucci, who went 38 yards for the touchdown - his first of the season."I was glad to see Joe get that touchdown, because he does a lot of the dirty work for us on blocking and opening things up for other guys, so it was nice to see him get one of his own," said Snyder.TIME AFTER TIME ... After Palmerton held the ball for approximately 9:35 in the first quarter and came away with no points, it held the ball for just 4:39 in the second quarter when it scored its first points of the night.WELL, THAT'S A FIRST ... Stasko's 69-yard touchdown run was the first time this season that Northwestern allowed any third quarter points. Stasko, who is third in the Colonial League in rushing, finished the night carrying the ball 25 times for 193 yards.GOOD JOB, GUYS ... With lineman Chet Karpyn out with an injury, Northwestern center/defensive end Andrew Sorensen noted the play of juniors Evan Scholler on defense and Andrew Seyler on offense, who have filled in well for Karpyn.