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Northview bounces back with blowout win over Edgewood
Coming off a 27-point loss at Cascade last week that saw Northview’s football team tumble down the Class 4A polls, head coach Mark Raetz challenged his group to put together five of their best days of practice before hitting the road to play on the red turf in Ellettsville.
Raetz has pointed to the practice habits – both good and bad – of the No. 16-ranked Knights playing a pivotal role in the way they perform on Friday nights, and he echoed those same sentiments again following Northview’s 41-7 win over Edgewood that extended its winning streak to 15 in a row against the Mustangs.
“We practiced better all week,” said Raetz. “And really, sometimes all it takes is some adversity to hit and some things not going our way to get refocused. I felt like our kids were much more focused throughout the week, and I think that showed on the field.”
In the loss to Cascade, the Knights struggled on both sides of the ball.
That wasn’t the case on Friday as the offense scored on seven of their nine drives – not counting the team’s possessions at the end of each half – and did so by using the passing game early and often.
Northview turned to first-year starting quarterback Colton Bath and asked him to put the ball in the air more times in the first half (22) than he did in the entirety of the game against the Cadets despite needing to score as quickly as possible to get themselves within striking distance.
The reason? Raetz and the offensive staff quickly noticed the way the Mustangs were defending them by loading up the box to take away the run. So, they attacked them with the passing game, and executed the plan in a big way as Bath completed 77 percent of his passes (17-for-22) for 236 yards and two touchdowns, both of which were hauled in by Avery Perry, who also added a rushing score to give him a hat trick for the second time this year.
“They came out with a different defense than what they’ve shown all year, and it left the flat open. They were loading up to stop our run game, so we were just taking what was there,” said Raetz.
Leading six drives that ended with points being put on the scoreboard in the first half, which included one of Luke Whitman’s two successful field goals, allowed Bath and the rest of the offensive starters to take the rest of the game off.
Most of the defensive starters also earned the final 24 minutes to watch from the sideline after they held Edgewood to 63 total yards while forcing seven fumbles – four of which were recovered by the Knights – en route to pitching a first half shutout.
“We always want to force some turnovers, although we fumbled the ball a few times too, so I don’t know if it was just slick out here tonight or what, but we were glad to get a few turnovers to go our way,” Raetz said.
With the win, Northview remains unbeaten against Western Indiana Conference Gold Division opponents this season. The Knights will face the last of their inner-division rivals next week when Indian Creek comes to town with the conference crown on the line. It marks the second straight season Northview and Indian Creek will square off in the regular season finale for the WIC title. And after falling to the Braves in a heartbreaker last year, Northview is hoping to give them a dose of payback and become outright conference champions for the first time since 2020.
“This is what we work for during the offseason and then all season up until this point. We want to play for championships, and we’ve put ourselves in a position to do that,” said Raetz. “I told our players that we haven’t won it outright since 2020, so that’s something we want to do, especially after what happened last year. We don’t have school this week because it’s fall break. It could be very easy for our guys to get distracted, but I told them that I love this week because all we have to focus on is football. We have to keep our focus on playing in a championship game.”
Northview 41, Edgewood 7
Northview 10 28 0 3 — 41
Edgewood 0 0 7 0 — 7
Nv — Perry 15 pass from Bath (Whitman kick), 8:42 1Q
Nv — Whitman 35 kick, 1:15 1Q
Nv — Perry 7 run (Whitman kick), 11:55 2Q
Nv — Perry 40 pass from Bath (Whitman kick), 10:00 2Q
Nv — McLawyer 14 run (Whitman kick), 8:14 2Q
Nv — Fell 2 run (Whitman kick), 4:32 2Q
E — Law 2 run (Chase kick), 4:19 3Q
Nv — Whitman 25 kick, 7:47 4Q
Nv E
First downs 15 8
Rushes-yards 23-138 23-69
Passing 236 126
Comp-Att-Int 17-22-0 8-19-0
Return yards 66 173
Punts-avg. 1-36.0 2-35.0
Fumbles-lost 3-1 7-4
Penalties-yards 1-7 4-35
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
Rushing — Northview, Fell 4-19, Perry 4-30, McLawyer 6-54, Raetz 1-4, McCluskey 2-2, C.Schimmel 3-(-1), Stewart 3-25. Edgewood, Perry 7-14, Law 15-52, Carpenter 1-3.
Passing — Northview, Bath 17-22-2 236. Edgewood, Law 7-18-0 70, Carpenter 1-1-0 56.
Receiving — Northview, Perry 8-88, Deakins 1-15, Fell 2-67, Sutherland 3-42, Raetz 3-41, Thompson 2-13. Edgewood, Roberts 3-104, Carpenter 1-9, Lawson 1-3, Perry 1-6, Cosby 2-4.
Next — Northview (7-1) hosts Indian Creek and Edgewood (2-6) visits Brown County Friday.