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Northwestern rolls over Roughs

Northwestern may have saved its best all around performance for its regular season finale.

The Tigers rolled to a 48-14 victory ruining Catasauqua's Senior Night celebration. The loss also eliminated Catty from a potential District 11 playoff berth, even though it finished the season with a 2-8 mark.For Northwestern, the win gives them an 11th game next week in the Eastern Conference playoffs where it will face Blue Mountain.Once again, Trevor Cunningham stepped up to help the Tigers offense, which was hampered by a number of injuries to key players. Cunningham played both as a wide receiver and running back, scoring two touchdowns from each position and finishing the night with 310 yards of total offense. Cunningham also completed a pass to Caleb Clymer to convert a two-point conversion for the Tigers."It's been great getting to play at a couple different spots the past couple of weeks," said Cunningham. "We've been pretty banged up, so we've all just had to do whatever we can to pitch in."Sophomore running back Tyler Lobach also chipped in with 69 yards rushing on 16 carries and the offensive line put together an impressive performance in opening holes for both Cunningham and Lobach."Our line kind of took it personally that we haven't had a lot of big running games, because at Northwestern, it's just kind of assumed that we'll be able to run the ball," said coach Josh Snyder. "We challenged them this week to be physical and open things up for our backs and they really responded."Tyler really took advantage of his opportunity as well. He played well last week and we gave him a little more this week, which left Trevor available to play his normal position a little more. What's been nice about Tyler is that he hasn't had any negative runs. That's a great sign."Northwestern used a couple strikes, including runs of 65 and 46 yards by Cunningham and an 86-yard completion from Deven Bollinger to Cunningham. But they also used the ground game to eat up some clock. Northwestern opened up the third quarter with an 11-play drive that ate up over five-minutes off the clock, which has been unusual for the Tigers offense this season."We have an offense that can strike pretty quickly, but we put together a couple drives tonight where we just ate up yards here and there and kept moving the chains and that was nice to see," said Snyder. "Again, a lot of that comes back to our offensive line."THE WALKING WOUNDED... Phillip Dangello missed his second game with a knee injury, while Tyler Foster (dislocated shoulder) missed his first game of the season. Anthony Colucci was also out of the lineup with an injury for Northwestern. The good news was that Caleb Clymer, who was limited to playing just defensively last week, returned to play both sides of the ball against Catasauqua.THEY WERE THE CHAMPIONS... Northwestern played in the Eastern Conference playoffs in 2013 and wound up as champions.