This past weekend saw yet another disappointing loss for the NW football team who fell to Hastings in a largely uninteresting game that ended with a score of 10-9. This loss dropped the NW Football Team to 2-3, a losing record for the first time in a while, and probably out of playoff contention. This loss, like last week’s to Dordt, snapped an 18 game winning streak against Hastings. What happened for Northwestern to lose back to back games at home?
For a bit of context, it was mostly windy, which had the effect of hindering the pass game, and making kicks way harder to attempt on one side of the field, so it’s no surprise that the final score was low. That doesn’t account for the lethargic nature of both offenses, who neglected to score a single offensive touchdown throughout the game. With all the points coming from field goals or the single defensive touchdown.
Not much happened throughout the game, as Hastings initially took the lead with 5 minutes left in the first. They nailed a short 21 yard field goal to set the score to 3-0. Following a bunch of stalled drives, Northwestern finally answered with a 52 yard field goal from Jovany Kabongo to tie the game up with 8 minutes left in the half. Kabongo then followed that up by doinking in 58 yard field goal as time expired in the half to give the Raiders a 6-3 lead.
They exchanged the ball to start the second half, but NW got pinned on the 5 yard line, and threw a bad Pick-6, leading to the only touchdown of the game, and Hastings final points of the game with nearly 27 minutes left to play. NW finally managed to score at the end of the 3rd quarter with a 31 yard field goal, to put the Raiders down by 1. The Raiders were unable to capitalize on this opportunity and led multiple drives into scoring range, but were unable to make the field goals needed to take the lead, including just barely missing a long 65 yarder, and just missing a 51 yarder at the end of the game.
Overall the team has really struggled in games that used to be seen as easy wins on the schedule, and with a couple more ranked opponents on the horizon, I’m not as confident as I was at the beginning of this season. I think Northwestern has a chance to still turn it around, but when our next home game is against Morningside, who we usually struggle with anyways, it could be looking a little rough for the rest of the season.
