Back-to-back.

Northwestern finished off a 10-0 regular season with a 23-17 win over a very good Southern Lehigh squad last week to give them back-to-back 10-0 regular season campaigns. The Tigers are the first team in the Times News area to finish 10-0 in consecutive regular seasons.

Northwestern will now start its journey to capturing back-to-back District 11 3A championships as the No. 1 seed Tigers host No. 4 seed Saucon Valley in New Tripoli on Friday night.

Although Northwestern dominated the game against Southern Lehigh in the yardage department, the Spartans were able to take advantage of some Tiger miscues to convert off good field position opportunities and give Northwestern its toughest test of the season.

Still, the Tigers were able to rush for 300 yards, and on the defensive side of the ball allowed just 207 total yards to an explosive Spartans’ offense.

Eli Zimmerman once again led the way in the rushing department, gashing the Southern Lehigh defense for 238 yards and a touchdown, which included a 71-yard scoring scamper late in the game to put the Tigers up two scores. On the season, Zimmerman has rushed for 1,432 yards and 16 touchdowns at an impressive 13.5 yards per carry.

The Northwestern rushing attack has been formidable week in and week out, as it’s averaging 268 yards per game on the ground.

“There’s no doubt we didn’t play our best football last week. But to still come away with a win, and not playing our best to a team as good as Southern Lehigh, I think that says a lot about where we could be when we do play to the best of our abilities,” said Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder. “I’m proud of the way our guys handled that game last week. They didn’t get too high or too low. They stayed businesslike.

“Southern Lehigh had pretty good field position throughout the game off some mistakes we made on special teams. We were also penalized 10 times, which is something we’re going to need to clean up. But I thought we ran the football pretty well, and yardage-wise we didn’t give up much yardage at all. They had zero explosive plays for scores, which is what we wanted. We wanted to make them work for it.”

Northwestern will look to clean up a few things this week against a Saucon Valley team that finished the season with an 8-2 record, including a nice win to end the season over Northern Lehigh. The Panthers suffered a tough 51-25 loss to Southern Lehigh a few weeks ago. Northwestern and Saucon Valley did not meet this season.

The Panthers are led by the Rohn brothers. Senior Jared Rohn leads the team in rushing with 1,098 yards rushing and 17 touchdowns. Sophomore Braden Rohn is a tough dual-threat quarterback, who has thrown for 1,217 yards and 17 touchdowns with six interceptions, while also rushing for 452 yards and four scores.

Senior wide receiver Jack Robertson has been one of the best pass-catchers in District 11 this season, pulling in 52 balls for 910 yards and 13 touchdowns.

It’s no secret to any team in District 11 how good the Northwestern defense has been this season. The Tigers are giving up just 136.9 total yards per game, and a mere 5.3 points per contest.

“Saucon Valley is an 8-2 team. They have won a bunch of ball games, and they’re playing confident after a good win over Northern Lehigh last week,” said Snyder.

“They’re going to spread things out. They rarely play a tight end. The Rohn kids are good players, and they have had some big games for them this season. They like to make you defend the whole field, and they’re going to make you defend them sideline to sideline. They like to take shots down the field as well to Robertson.

“Defensively, they run an odd front. They bring pressure from all over. They like to crowd the line of scrimmage. So, we’re going to need to do a good job of deciphering what they are in at the line of scrimmage and identify their coverages. We definitely need to play a little cleaner than we did last week, take advantage of opportunities and most importantly finish off drives.”