Wildcats react to season opening loss

MARQUETTE – The Northern Michigan University football team suffered a blow right out of the gates to GLIAC foe Northwood Saturday night at the Superior Dome.

The Timberwolves controlled the game from start to finish. Northwood racked up 254 yards on the ground. The T’Wolves triple option offense held onto the football for more than 41 minutes of the game.

Northwood also converted six of thirteen third downs, while the Wildcats were just two of ten. In all, this was not the start to the year that the Wildcats had hoped for.

“I think early on they did a heck of a job dominating the time of possession,” said NMU head football coach Chris Ostrowsky. “We only had three possessions in the first half which was pretty unbelievable. In the second half we just didn’t play well. We didn’t make good decisions and we didn’t execute. I thought our defense played good enough for us to win. Here in this program if you give up 23 points you should win the game,” Ostrowsky went on to say.

“We have to get off the field on third down,” said NMU senior linebacker Nick Krause. “You can’t be on the field that long and expect to win. We came out flying around, made some adjustments to try and contain him (Northwood running back Jared Briguglio)… it’s a tough loss.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that we have to work on,” said NMU sophomore quarterback Shaye Brown. “We have to execute better. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe we just needed to get humbled up a little bit. We’ll come back strong, I’m not too worried about it.”

NMU is next in action this Saturday at Quincy.