ORANGE CITY, Iowa — Hastings College hadn’t won a football game against Northwestern in over two decades. So it was only fitting the Broncos had to wait to celebrate until after the final play.
Sweating out a one-point lead at No. 22 Northwestern Saturday afternoon, HC had to watch Jovany Kabongo’s 51-yard game-winning field goal attempt fly through the air, only to sail wide left as time expired, as the Broncos held on to their 10-9 upset win.
“I still didn’t believe until the officials waved their arms,” HC head coach Matt Franzen told X-Stream Sports following the win. “And then pandemonium. We earned it. We have been working hard. We have come up short a lot of times and our guys earned this today.”
The win marked Hastings’ first over the Red Raiders since 2004, and improved its record to 3-3 entering a bye week.
“This is big for us,” Franzen said. “Big for our program. Big for our kids to buy into doing the little things right and finally we have some proof of what we are working towards.”
The Broncos were able to take a second-half lead when Wyatt Ryan returned an interception for a five-yard touchdown early in the third quarter to give them a 10-6 lead, and held on despite several Northwestern drives that moved into scoring territory.
The Red Raiders (2-3) got within one when Kobongo hit a 31-yard field goal as time expired in the third quarter, but couldn’t replicate that feat on the final play of the game.
Kobongo also hit two field goals in the second quarter, including a 58-yarder at the end of the first half, which gave Northwestern a 6-3 edge after Hastings opened the scoring on a Colton Willmott 21-yard kick late in the first quarter.
“I’m so darn happy right now,” Franzen said. “I told the team after there were so many times it felt like this wasn’t going to be our day… Our guys just kept playing. Offensively we moved the ball and our defense kept stepping up and made the stops when we needed them.”
Hastings quarterback Carson Kudlacek completed 13 of his 22 passes for 77 yards in the game, while Dalton Armbruster rushed for a team-high 67 yards on 21 carries.
The story for the Broncos, however, was the defense, holding the Red Raiders to just 220 yards of offense throughout the game.
Hastings (3-3) will be back in action in two weekends, when it hosts No. 19 Concordia on Oct. 18.
“This will send us into the bye week on cloud nine,” Franzen said. “We will have three good practices next week, nice days off on the weekend and then we come back to get ready for Concordia. We need to bring great effort there because it looks like they have a really good team again and reloaded.”
Ryan nets honors
Wyatt Ryan’s performance in Saturday’s win at No. 22 Northwestern netted him the GPAC and NAIA defensive player of the week honors.
The senior from Overton had the game-changing pick-six — the only touchdown of the game — and two solo tackles in the contest.
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