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Cascade hands Northview first loss of season
One play or one sequence of plays cannot summarize the entirety of a high school football game but late in the fourth quarter of Friday’s matchup between Class 4A No. 10 Northview and Class 3A No. 14 Cascade – the Week 7 marquee matchup around the Wabash Valley – there were consecutive possessions that came close to it.
With the ball at midfield, Northview quarterback Colton Bath dropped back to pass and was immediately hit with a wall of Cadets in his face, flushing the junior signal caller from the pocket. Bath successfully got the ball out of his hands before the squadron of players in black uniforms could bring him down. Unfortunately, the ball was tipped into the air and then into the waiting hands of a Cascade defender who returned it into Northview territory.
Five plays later, Cascade’s pep band was playing the school’s fight song after the hosts crossed the goal line and were celebrating in the end zone for the sixth time Friday night, leading to a 41-14 loss for the Knights, their first of the season.
“[We’re] extremely disappointed,” said Northview head coach Mark Raetz, “but I saw it coming all week. We didn’t have a good week of practice. I think our guys were content with what happened the week before. We got our butts handed to us.”
Cascade, which runs an unorthodox offensive attack that showcased its run game 88 percent of the snaps, did what it wanted with the ball in its hands on Friday.
The Cadets ran for 388 yards and 6.57 yards per carry, leading to five touchdowns. They also dropped in an occasional pass – eight to be exact – to keep the Knights off balance throughout the evening.
Raetz pointed to the number of missed tackles and an inability to locate the ball carrier with so many players constantly moving before and during the play as areas that burned the defense in the loss.
“They just dominated us in every way,” Raetz said. “They dominated us really all the way across the board.”
As for the offense, one statistic told the story.
Northview punted the ball the same number of times in its first three drives Friday night (3) as it did in the first six weeks of the season (3), and because of that, the Knights fell behind by double figures for the first time all year and had to scrap their traditional run-first offensive scheme due to their lack of possessions and the time Cascade took off the clock when it had the ball.
Still, Northview found itself with a chance to cut into the 21-point deficit at the end of the first half after running Slade Fell injected some life into the visiting sideline with a 58-yard run that set the visitors up on the 8-yard line with just over one minute left in the second quarter.
What followed was three straight runs that went for a total of seven yards, leaving the Knights with one last chance to punch it into the end zone and get on the scoreboard.
Instead, Bath’s quarterback keeper was halted as the junior reached for the left pylon but was bounced out of bounds, marking the first time this fall Northview failed to score in consecutive quarters.
“We had busted assignments down there. That was bad. Those are plays we’ve been running since Day 1, but there were busted assignments. That’s a lack of preparation,” Raetz said. “We weren’t ready to play tonight.”
Northview crossed the goal line twice in the second half – a 26-yard pass from Bath to Avery Perry in the third quarter and an 84-yard kick return from DeMarius McLawyer in the fourth quarter – but that was all it could muster in the loss to Cascade.
Raetz said afterwards he hopes his team remembers the disappointment it felt walking off the field and into the locker room on Friday and uses that as motivation over the final two weeks of the regular season, beginning at Edgewood next week, and then into the postseason after that.
“This needs to be a wakeup call. We need to get back on track with how we do things rather than how they want to do it,” said Raetz.
Cascade 41, Northview 14
Northview 0 0 7 7 — 14
Cascade 7 14 6 14 — 41
C — Trebley 4 run (Stucky kick), 4:13 1Q
C — Trebley 3 run (Stucky kick), 8:42 2Q
C — Mink 1 run (Stucky kick), 2:18 2Q
C — Hege pass from Trebley (Stucky kick missed), 11:23 3Q
Nv — Perry 26 pass from Bath (Whitman kick), :0.5 3Q
C — Savini 7 run (Stucky kick), 7:42 4Q
C — Savini 24 run (Stucky kick), 1:28 4Q
Nv — McLawyer 84 kick return (Whitman kick), 1:11 4Q
Nv C
First downs 6 22
Rushes-yards 18-97 59-388
Passing 87 44
Comp-Att-Int 6-16-1 4-8-0
Return yards 175 81
Punts-avg. 5-36.4 1-29.0
Fumbles-lost 1-0 1-1
Penalties-yards 6-43 8-56
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing — Northview, Fell 10-68, Bath 5-12, Perry 1-5, McLawyer 2-12. Cascade, Mink 19-133, Savini 14-139, Trebley 9-29, Hege 7-20, Farmer 1-5, Hobson 1-4, Turner Jr. 8-58.
Passing — Northview, Bath 6-16-1 87. Cascade, Trebley 4-8-1 44.
Receiving — Northview, Perry 3-50, Deakins 1-5, Fell 1-22, Sutherland 1-10. Cascade, Hege 2-26, Savini 1-11, Roshong 1-7.
Next — Northview (6-1) visits Edgewood and Cascade (7-0) visits Greencastle Friday.