Coming off a season-opening win with the largest margin of victory in a half-century, Northwestern has plenty of reasons to smile heading into its game against Eastern Michigan. After all, senior quarterback Mike Kafka, junior running back Stephen Simmons and senior wide receiver Andrew Brewer all had career days against Towson. In addition, Mike Hankwitz’s stringent defense held the Tigers to just 65 rushing yards while the offense committed only one turnover.
But there are three facets of the game-offense, defense and special teams. With the loss of placekicker Amado Villareal to graduation, junior Stefan Demos has taken over the team’s kicking duties. On Saturday, Demos recorded the first field goal of his career-a 26-yarder in the third quarter.
“It was real exciting for me,” Demos said. “Coming in here I was a kicker, and it’s nice to get back out there. It felt good. My legs feel pretty good right now, I had a pretty good camp and I’m really excited for this year.”
Demos, who also handles the punting duties for the Wildcats, leads a crew that includes three freshmen specialists.
Coach Pat Fitzgerald said the Cats have quite a few newcomers playing on special teams, and it is important that they catch up to the speed of collegiate football.
“I saw a lot of first time players out there in the kicking game, and I think the first few reps was a little faster than they expected it and maybe a little more intense,” he said. “We had a bunch of plays that we could have made, and as the season goes along that’s what we’re going to need to do.”
Energy on the sidelines
Even though the Cats came out strong on the field, Fitzgerald was disappointed with their attitude on the sideline.
“We need to have more energy and more passion on the sideline,” he said. “It’s a little over $52,000 to be on scholarship here, and I had a lot of paid cheerleaders today that didn’t do a very good job.”
On Tuesday, Fitzgerald addressed the issue once again, this time stressing consistency.
“I think you are what your habits are,” he said. “If you’re into the practice, you’ll be into games. If you’re enthusiastic to work and improve, you’ll be the same way in games. We want to create the right habits.”
Putting out the fire
After struggling offensively for the first 20 minutes of the game, Towson took advantage of quarterback Dan Persa’s second quarter interception, driving the ball 78 yards for its first score of the game. After the contest, Fitzgerald alluded to the importance of “putting out the fire” after a big shift in momentum. For senior safety Brendan Smith, the key is a strong mindset.
“We have to want to be out there,” Smith said. “You have to have that urgency to go out there and help the team out and do our jobs and get off the field. I think we just got a little lackluster on Saturday, hopefully we’ll change that.”
Fitzgerald hopes that the players will take it upon themselves to kill an opposing team’s momentum after committing a turnover.
“We’ve done a good job with that historically,” Fitzgerald said. “Our guys will rise to the occasion, they were as disappointed as we were as coaches.”
