Football Preview: East Catholic Eagles vs. Northwest Catholic Lions
East Catholic and Northwest Catholic are an even 5-5 against one another since October of 2014, but not for long. After both having extra time off, both will shake off the cobwebs and square off against one another at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Both teams are coming into the match red-hot, with East Catholic sitting on four straight victories and Northwest Catholic on three.
Last Friday, East Catholic strolled past Plainville with points to spare, taking the game 35-17.
A big part of East Catholic's win came down to the chemistry between Christian Morales and his top target Joey Montalvo. Morales threw for 211 yards and four touchdowns on only 18 passes while Montalvo picked up 152 receiving yards and three touchdowns. Montalvo's longest reception was for an impressive 61 yards, which helps to explain his lofty yards per catch total. Jared Macaluso was in the mix too, providing East Catholic with a touchdown.
One reason for the win was East Catholic's imposing defense, which managed to get into the backfield for three sacks. Theo Perkins was particularly dangerous to the passing game, picking up two himself. With that strong performance, he is now averaging an impressive 5.4 total tackles per game.
Meanwhile, Northwest Catholic never let their opponents score last Saturday. They blew past Lewis Mills 42-0. The result was nothing new for the Lions, who have now won five contests by 20 points or more so far this season.
Vincent Burbank continued his habit of posting crazy stat lines, throwing for 237 yards and four touchdowns while completing 81.3% of his passes. He has been hot recently, having posted four or more passing touchdowns the last three times he's played. Kayden Davis was Burbank's top target, picking up 90 receiving yards and two touchdowns.
Northwest Catholic didn't go easy on the quarterback and picked off three passes before the game was over. It was truly a group effort as Patrick Knorr, Bryce Jones, and Burbank picked up one apiece.
East Catholic's victory was their third straight on the road, which pushed their record up to 8-1. Those good results were due in large part to their defensive effort, having only surrendered 12.0 points per game. As for Northwest Catholic, they are on a roll lately: they've won five of their last six matchups, which provided a nice bump to their 7-2 record this season.
East Catholic strolled past Northwest Catholic in their previous meeting back in November of 2023 by a score of 28-13. Will East Catholic repeat their success, or does Northwest Catholic have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
