Against Northern Lehigh, the Southern Lehigh Spartans found the end zone on the first play of three of their first four drives of the game.

They weren’t that fast against Northwestern, but on just the second play of the game, senior quarterback Logan Edmond hit Dalton Musselman for a 73-yard touchdown pass and the Spartans offense was picking up where they left off a week earlier against the Bulldogs. In the end, Northwestern fell for just the second time this season, losing to Southern Lehigh 45-21.

The Edmond-to-Musselman touchdown connection would hit four times against Northwestern. Their second strike came with 7:12 left in the first half from 22-yards out, followed by a 15-yard TD completion later in the second quarter.

Late in the third quarter, it was a seven-yard TD pass. Musselman pulled in 10 passes for 215 of Edmond’s 287 yards passing.

After Southern Lehigh’s quick strike, Northwestern’s first drive stalled at the Southern Lehigh 37 and resulted in the Tigers punting with hopes of pinning the Spartans deep in their own territory. On the ensuing drive, Southern Lehigh ran five minutes off the clock with a 17-play drive that resulted in no score when Christian Colasurdo missed on a 28-yard field goal.

“As it turned out, field position was tough for us all night,” said Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder, whose team never really seemed to get on track. “We struggled in all three phases (offense, defense, special teams) and just made a lot of mistakes tonight that hurt us. I told them that you can’t do that against a good team like Southern Lehigh.”

Offensively, Northwestern’s ground game, which produced at least one 100-yard rusher in each of the first five weeks, hasn’t been able to get close to that mark in its last two games. As a team the Tigers finished the night with just 89 yards rushing thanks to a Spartan defense that overloaded the box and shut down the running game.

The Spartans seemed to thrive in crucial situations, converting four third-down plays and three fourth-down plays, plus hitting a 28-yard field goal on fourth down. Add to that 76 yards in penalties and a costly fumble and there was a lot that went wrong for Northwestern.

“Every year you’re going to have that one game where nothing seems to work and that night for us this year was tonight,” Snyder said. “Hopefully, it’s the only time that happens this year.

“Overall we’ve played well this year but tonight, we just couldn’t finish when we would come up with opportunities and we kept shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Bollinger had three rushing touchdowns, going five, one and 13 yards on the plays to account for the Northwestern scoring. Through the air, Bollinger threw more than usual, attempting a season-high 32 passes and completing 16 of them for 243 yards. Justin Rodda, who has become a favorite target of Bollinger, pulled down five catches for a team-high 84 yards. Tyler Lobach led the Tigers in catches with six for 67 yards.

“Part of that was dictated by the game,” said Snyder. “They were overloading the box against us and it made it tough to run. We have confidence in our passing game so we tried to open things up a little with Bollinger’s arm.”

The loss takes just a little luster off of next week’s game at Saucon Valley. At 7-0, the Panthers are the only undefeated team in the Colonial League, with Notre Dame (6-1) right behind them. Northwestern and Palisades are both 5-2 on the season heading into the final three games of the season.