Brad Emons
September 19, 2015
Republished with permission of the Novi News
After losing by a total of five points the previous two weeks, Novi’s football team got off the deck and earned a 28-14 KLAA Central Division victory Friday at home over Salem.
The Wildcats, now 1-3 overall and 1-1 in the KLAA Central, jumped out to a 14-0 halftime lead thanks to a pair of second-quarter scores.
Junior quarterback Alec Bageris, who was 13-of-20 passing on the night for 132 yards, fired a 25-yard touchdown pass to Traveon Maddox with 6:06 left to cap a 12-play, 82-yard scoring drive.
Emanuel Jackson then scored the first of his three TDs on a 1-yard run with 3:15 to make it a 14-point cushion at intermission (following Blake King’s extra point).
With 5:22 left in the third period, Novi made it 21-0 on a 5-yard scoring run by Jackson, but Salem (2-2, 1-1) countered with a 15-yard TD run by Deston Langford followed by Alex Nicholson’s 1-yard TD (after Freddie McGee III picked off a Bageris pass at the Novi 43).
But the Wildcats go back up by two scores again with 11:50 remaining in the game as Jackson, who had a team-high 76 yards rushing on 13 carries, busted loose for a 54-yard TD run. (Jackson also had 89-yard TD catch negated by motion call.)
“We were due, but I feel we’ve gotten better and better each and every week,” Novi coach Jeff Burnside said. “We’ve gotten better in all three phases of the game. Tonight I thought we played very well on defense. They only had 50 yards at half, or something like that. We gave up a little bit in the second half.”
Novi had the edge in total offense, 255-22, while Salem recorded 13 first downs to the Wildcats’ 11.
Anthony D’Annibale had five catches for 67 yards, while Aahmaud Jenkins added 59 yards rushing on 12 attempts.
“The offense was opportunistic,” Burnside said. “They (Salem) had one ‘pick,’ which put the defense on a short field. It got a little muddled, but the offense after that scored to put the stress back on them again.”
Langford paced Salem with 89 yards rushing on 21 carries. Nicholson was 5-of-11 passing for 49 yards, while Roger Ayers III was 3-of-9 for 41.
“They pretty much did what we thought they would do,” Burnside said. “We were so geared to stop Deston Langford. We really limited him in the first half. The second half the (Alex) Nicholson kid started to pull the ball and they had a really good drive and got us a bit discombobulated. But we kind of got that back under control. They hadn’t been pulling the ball, then all the sudden they started pulling the ball on us and out outside (line) backers were a little bit confused. Once we got them back to right we wer good again.
Brent George paced Novi’s defense with a total of eight tackles (five solo), including a sack and two for loss. Nick Sabo added eight tackles (three solo), while Spencer Vankirk had a pair of interceptions.
In addition going 4-for-4 on extra points, King averaged 33.5 yards per punt.
“Our punting game was outstanding,” Burnside said. “We pinned them inside the 20 and inside the 5 at least once.”