NORMAL – Normal Community West High School had but seconds to try to send their fans home happy Friday night at Wildcat Field. Trailing Bloomington 14-7 in the last couple of minutes of the Big 12 Conference contest, the Wildcats had the football but had not crossed midfield as they sought a big play in hopes of beating the Purple Raiders.

Then, with 19.9 seconds remaining in the contest, senior quarterback Kolton Lindsay connected with junior wide receiver Matthew Marsaglia for a 57 yard touchdown followed by a successful point after try by junior kicker Owen Senn which gave the Wildcats a wild 14-10 win over the Purple Raiders.

To the fans, it was another successful play. For Marsaglia, it came across like a moment of déjà vu because he had done something similar under similar circumstances. The 5 foot-8, 150 pounder told reporters he experienced a near-exact situation playing his freshmen year. Of the play he knew he needed to catch against the Purple Raiders, he said, “I just knew I had to catch this. I knew if I didn’t catch this, it’s going to be so embarrassing.”

But having caught it and scored, there was no embarrassment as Marsaglia put his team in front for the win helping Normal West keep a perfect 3-0 Big 12 Conference record. Normal West is 3-1 overall on the season.

Normal West scored early in the contest on their first series in the first quarter, as Lindsay connected with senior wide receiver Jamarcus Webb on a 9 yard touchdown pass at 8:35 in the first quarter followed by Senn’s extra point, putting Normal West up, 7-0. Both defenses managed to keep their opponents from scoring for the remainder of the half, and each side went scoreless in the third quarter.

Freshman kicker Taylor Anderson helped Bloomington High (2-2 Big 12 and overall) narrow West’s lead, 7-3, with a 24 yard field goal with 7:59 left in the fourth quarter, capping their longest drive of the night consisting of 16 plays going 95 yards for the score.

Normal West wound up punting to conclude the ensuing set of downs, and with the ball back in their possession, BHS went to work from their own 49. Twelve plays later, junior quarterback Marcus Griffin used a keeper play to score with 52 seconds left in the contest, followed by Senn’s extra point to allow BHS to take a 10-7 lead. From there, fans saw Normal West quickly work against the clock while holding back Purple Raiders defenders en route to the victory.

“This was another big game for us to keep learning and get ourselves ready for the postseason,” Normal West head coach Nate Fincham explained. “Bloomington was more physical than us. That’s what it comes down to. They dictated the tempo to us and that’s where our mistakes happened.” He said his team needed to maintain a physical presence and learn to not let up on opponents.

He added his players need to “learn to finish drives, finish blocks, and finish tackles, and we didn’t have that problem the first two weeks. We’ve done a pretty good job of making the plays necessary previously but we did not do the job today.”

“We did what they thought they would do,” BHS head coach Scott Godfrey said in assessing the Wildcats team his team saw. “The play at the end of the game was the difference.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 18th, 2021 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Bloomington HS, Normal West HS, The Normalite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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