A face very familiar to Northwestern Lehigh football head coach Josh Snyder took over the reins at Bangor this season and Snyder knows what to expect.

Paul Reduzzi, who spent 11 seasons as the head coach at Pen Argyl is now the headman at Bangor, a program that basically had to start from scratch, with just five starters returning from last season.

“Paul’s a good coach and Tom Toth did a good job with that program before Paul came on, so they’ve got a good foundation,” said Snyder of this week’s opponent. “We know that they’ll come in prepared and it should be an interesting game.”

The Slaters are looking to rebound from a 49-0 pasting put on them by Southern Lehigh last week, which dropped them to 2-2 on the season. They opened with a win over Catasauqua and picked up a second win against Northern Lehigh in week three sandwiched around a loss to Notre Dame (Green Pond).

Bangor has given up an average of 33 points per week this season and the Northwestern offense is one of the more capable units in the Colonial League. This could also be a week when the Tigers defense gets to set themselves right a little bit after some miscues along the way this season.

“I was really happy with how we played offensively last week, but defensively, we could have done better,” said Snyder. “We’ve had some spots where we give up a big play and it sets us back and we saw that last week at Wilson. We’ve worked on fixing that, so we’re hoping that we can play a tougher brand of defense.”

One of the keys on both sides of the ball has been getting sophomore Justin Holmes healthy. Holmes has helped out at cornerback and in just his second game as a wide receiver, set a school record with 215 yards receiving last week in the 49-30 win over Wilson.

Holmes missed the first two weeks with a quad injury and slowly worked his way back into the rotation in week three before showing up big time last week.

Last week was also the first week that both quarterback Deven Bollinger and running back Nick Henry went over the 100-yard mark this season. The two combined for 49 carries and 238 yards on the ground, which opened up the passing lanes for Bollinger to hit Holmes and any other receivers he wanted.

“That’s always the game plan for us is to use the running game to open things up,” said Snyder. “Then you can use some play action and you get the corners second guessing whether they should come up or not and it makes the passing game that much better.”

Playing against Reduzzi’s Pen Argyl teams in the past, he tended to throw a 4-3 defense at the Tigers, so Snyder is expecting much of the same this time around.

“That’s what he’s always done in the past, but you never know for sure now, because he has a different group of guys and he may try to show us something different,” said Snyder.

Of the final six games on the Northwestern schedule, four of them are at Tiger Stadium. The team has had just one game on their home turf and has also been limited in how much it can even practice on the new field because of other games being played at the facility.

The schedule has also had them bounce from a Friday night game for the opener to a Thursday game, back to a Friday game and then to a Saturday game last week at Wilson.

“It’s been a little tough,” said Snyder. “I don’t think the players mind it as much as the coaches do though. We just have to try to keep things as routine as we can and not let it get in our heads.

“The upside is that now that we’re done with the early part of the schedule, we have the schedule in our favor in terms of playing home games the rest of the way. We also have Friday nights the rest of the way, so we can have that routine throughout the week.”