Expect new wrinkles in Tigers-Panthers rematch
Northwestern won big on Oct. 12, but both teams will have different schemes in Saturday night’s D-11 semis.
Saucon Valley was an unbeaten team when it took the field on Oct. 12 to play Northwestern.
When the Panthers walked off the field, they were no longer unbeaten.
In one of the more surprising results of the Colonial League regular season, Northwestern whipped Saucon 49-28 Oct. 12 behind a big performance by quarterback Deven Bollinger, who tied his own school record by passing for five touchdowns and running for another.
On Saturday night, the Tigers return to Montford E. Illick Stadium in Hellertown hoping for a similar result. This time, a win would put them into the District 11 4A championship.
The Panthers, meanwhile, seek a turnaround and a fifth consecutive appearance in a district final.
The winner gets the survivor of Saturday afternoon’s Pottsville-Bethlehem Catholic semifinal for the district title at a neutral site next week.
“That previous game against them was our starting point for the second half of the season,” Northwestern coach Josh Snyder said. “The week before we lost pretty badly to Southern Lehigh, so it was a big bounce-back game for us. We’ve been sort of rolling ever since and building momentum from that win.”
Not everything will be the same this time. Snyder said he noticed on film a few wrinkles and tweaks that Saucon Valley has made since the previous meeting.
He doesn’t expect the same Saucon scheme and doesn’t plan to do things exactly the same way.
“We were able to take advantage of some of the things they were doing coverage-wise in the first game, but our game plan is to go in there very balanced and take what the defense gives us one way or another,” Snyder said. “If they adjust their coverage, we may have to run the ball more than we did the last time. You have to go into a game like this with an open mind and be able to adapt and adjust.”
As usual, the game will be decided in the trenches.
“The key will be our offensive line,” Snyder said. “We’ve given up very few sacks and have more than 4,000 yards in 11 games. We felt we could control the line of scrimmage against Central Catholic and we just kept playing our game and things snowballed in the right direction. For all of our kids, this is our first time in districts, but we showed the game wasn’t too big for us.”
Meanwhile, Saucon has won at least one district playoff game for five straight years and is looking for its first district title since 2015.
If the Panthers and Golden Hawks do meet for the championship, it will mark the fifth consecutive year the programs met in districts and the fourth time in the finals. But first things first.
Here’s a look at the matchups: