Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder knew that Northern Lehigh would present a challenge for his football team in the penultimate week of the regular season.

For the first half, the winless Bulldogs fought tooth and nail with the favored Northwestern squad.

In the second half, however, the Tiger defense took charge. It held Northern Lehigh scoreless after halftime with the Bulldogs gaining just two first downs and 60 yards of offense over the final 24 minutes en route to a 35-14 Northwestern win.

“I’m really proud of our defensive unit and the coaches for getting a shutout in the second half,” Snyder said. “It’s always a good game between us and Northern Lehigh and I told the kids all week that I knew we were going to get their best effort and we did. But we stood up to the challenge and we’re glad to get the win.”

The Bulldogs grabbed the early lead as Zach Long pushed in from a yard out for the first score of the evening.

Phil Dangello responded with a one-yard touchdown run before the Bulldogs’ Mason Seiler grabbed a five-yard score for the 14-7 lead with 6:38 left before halftime.

“With them having an 0-8 season thus far,” said Dangello. “We knew they were going to come out firing and they came out really hard on us.”

“We knew right out of the gates that they were going to come at us guns blazing,” said Snyder. “They had nothing to lose.”

The Tigers (4-5) responded and quickly as their ensuing possession went 65 yards in 10 plays for another Dangello scoring trot to knot things up at 14-14. Northwestern followed that with a quick defensive stop and tacked on a 30-yard field goal by Hunter Miller for the halftime advantage.

“I thought a big key for us was that stretch, where we tied it up at 14-14, got a stop, forced them to punt and then take it down and get a field goal to go up at halftime,” Snyder said.

The Bulldogs have played well for parts of games this season, but head coach Joe Tout would like to see his team put together 48 minutes.

“That’s been our year,” said Tout. “Slow third quarters and not being consistent, We told our kids at halftime to not be content. We needed to play a complete game and we just didn’t do that.

“Give Northwestern credit. They fought in the second half. They battled and their kids made plays.”

The Tigers produced points on their first two drives of the second half, as freshman Nick Henry scored his first varsity touchdown and Miller added a 30-yard field goal for the 27-14 lead early in the fourth.

“Coming off a tough loss last week (to Southern Lehigh), it was huge for us to step up tonight,” Dangello said. “Once we weathered the storm, we came through with a couple touchdown runs from a few different people and that was big.”

The Northwestern rushing attack was difficult to stop as seven different players had carries in the game and all seven produced. The wide range of runners produced 192 yards of offense on 39 carries, and scored all three touchdowns on the ground.