Mistakes come back to bite Rangers in loss
SHICKSHINNY — If the football field is the best classroom for players, then Northwest coach Stephen Nestorick can only hope his young squad is getting some helpful lessons these days.
Mistakes in all three phases came back to haunt the Rangers all evening in a 59-0 loss to Lake-Lehman, as a close game early got turned on its head in a hurry in the second quarter.
On offense, sophomore quarterback Mason Bilby threw consecutive passes for touchdowns — by the Black Knights. Anthony Magnotta returned them for 33 yards and 24 yards in a 90-second span.
"What you're seeing there is a quarterback who hasn't taken a lot of reps. He's being put in some tough situations," Nestorick said. "He's trying to do a little bit too much at times, but it takes time and he's just finished his third career start."
Bilby and the offense weren't helped out much in terms of field position, either, as kick returner Christopher Martinez fumbled the ball and had to jump on it on consecutive kickoffs. The Rangers had to set up shop within the Rangers' 2-yard line both times.
Bilby had a stretch of three straight interceptions, helping the Black Knights score five touchdowns in eight minutes in the second frame. Magnotta ran it in from 4 yards out to start the frenzy and Alex Smith got in on the fun with a 5-yard yard scamper.
Magnotta also had a 30-yard keeper for the game's first score to give him five first-half touchdowns.
"I think we could have played them a lot closer than we did," Nestorick said. "That's a huge deficit to overcome with just mental errors, and I'm not certain we overcome it by just cleaning it up, but it would have been much cleaner.... We have to figure it out and hopefully stop letting one negative thing hurt the drive."
Though Magnotta wasn't involved in the scoring in the second half, the Knights didn't take their foot off the gas.
Chris Yetter was a wrecking ball coming out of halftime, accounting for 77 of the Knights' 86 yards on four carries. He capped the drive off with a 20-yard touchdown.
Even when things were looking better for the Rangers, they couldn't get away from the turnovers. Their longest drive of the contest went for eight plays and ended with the ball going through Shane Hempel's hands and into Valentino Cassano's for a 41-yard pick-six.
Then the domino effect had the Rangers fumbling two offensive snaps later with Cassano jumping on it.
Lake-Lehman turned that into six more points as Cordyn Harris punched it in from 14 yards out.
"We have these sparks where we have a long pass completion or get a long run off. We want to stack those, but then it seems every time we get one of those, we get a minor setback, and that turns into a major setback," Nestorick said. "We need to stack on the good plays and stop stacking on the negatives. There were some positives tonight against a good team, but some critical mental errors.
"It's hard to overcome starting on your own 1-yard line or turning the ball over multiple times, but there were some positives that we have to take away from tonight."
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