At times, it was déjà vu all over again for the Northwestern Tigers Friday night as Southern Lehigh quarterback Logan Edmond and wide receiver Dalton Musselman connected time after time for four touchdowns in a 45-21 win for the Spartans. Musselman pulled in 10 passes for 215 of Edmond’s 287 yards passing.

On their first drive of the game, Southern Lehigh needed just two plays to take an early lead. On the second play, Edmond hit Musselman for the first of their four end zone connections going for 73 yards. Their second strike came with 7:12 left in the first half from 22-yards out, followed by a 15-yard TD completion later in the second quarter. Late in the third quarter, it was a seven-yard TD pass.

Northwestern’s first drive stalled at the Southern Lehigh 37 and resulted in the Tigers punting with hopes of pinning the Spartans deep in their own territory. On the ensuing drive, Southern Lehigh ran five minutes off the clock with a 17-play drive that resulted in no score when Christian Colasurdo missed on a 28-yard field goal.

“As it turned out, field position was tough for us all night,” said coach Josh Snyder, whose team never really seemed to get on track. “Really, we struggled in all three phases (offense, defense, special teams) and just made a lot of mistakes tonight that hurt us. I told them that you can’t do that against a good team like Southern Lehigh.”

Another issue was holding Southern Lehigh on third and fourth down plays. The Spartans converted on four third down plays and three fourth down plays, plus hitting a 28-yard field goal on fourth down. Add to that 76 yards in penalties and a costly fumble and there was a lot that went wrong for Northwestern.

“Every year you’re going to have that one game where nothing seems to work and that night for us this year was tonight. Hopefully, it’s the only time that happens this year,” Snyder lamented. “Overall, we’ve played well this year but tonight, we just couldn’t finish when we would come up with opportunities and we kept shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Bollinger had three rushing touchdowns, going five, one and 13 yards on the plays to account for the Northwestern scoring.

THE CENTURY MARK

... The Tigers opened the season with five straight games where they had at least one rusher go over the 100-yard mark. In each of the last two weeks, they haven’t been able to get close to that mark. As a team they finished the night with just 89 yards rushing thanks to a Spartans defense that overloaded the box and shut down the running game.

WHERE THE POINTS COME FROM

... Last week against Palmerton, Bollinger and backup quarterback Josh Gornicz combined for a school record six touchdown passes, with Bollinger setting an individual mark for touchdown passes in a game with five. This week, all three scores came by running the ball. Ironically, six different receivers caught touchdown passes against the Blue Bombers but only five receivers even caught passes Friday night against Southern Lehigh.

SPARTAN MUDDERS

... The field at Tiger Stadium is in rough shape thanks to heavy rains and a lot of use. The red zone at the far end of the field is especially bad with other spots around the field also looking pretty rough. Northwestern players seemed to have more problems with the conditions than did Southern Lehigh players. “For some reason, it didn’t seem to bother them,” admitted Snyder. “We were playing on the same field but I didn’t see them losing their footing as much as we did.”