For the first half Friday against De La Salle, it looked as if Montini was nursing a slight hangover from last week’s shutout loss to St. Rita. The No. 20 Broncos committed three turnovers and let up 21 points heading into the break of their Catholic League Green debut.
That all changed in the second half as Montini recovered to defeat host De La Salle 43-30 on Friday evening.
“We had a productive week of practice after last week,” Charles Norgle said. “We worked hard and got after it so that won’t happen the rest of the year.”
The Broncos (2-2, 1-0) took the second-half kickoff, marched down the field and tied the game at 21 on a Norgle pass to Leon Thornton III. After De La Salle got a safety to make it 23-21, Norgle took over.
“We came out sloppy and coach got after us at half,” Norgle said. “We knew what we had to do and that was play an entire game of football.”
The senior threw two more touchdowns in the half, including a 75-yard bomb to Patrick Maloney to put the game out of reach.
Norgle (16-of-23, 272 yards, four touchdowns) wasn’t the only Broncos stud. Sophomore running back Prince Walker (20 rushes, 129 yards) recovered from a rough first half in which he coughed up the ball twice to add a touchdown in the second half to go with his first-half TD reception.
“He knows he’s young,” coach Chris Andriano said. “We’re not going to go away from him, he knows what he needs to work on and we’ll get that done.”
The Meteors (1-3, 0-2) didn’t let up. Quarterback Tom Duddleston led De La Salle to another scoring drive to cut the lead to 40-30, but it was too little too late for the Meteors, who dropped their second straight conference game.
Duddleston finished 31-of-46 for 329 yards and four touchdowns, but also threw two interceptions, both of which Montini used to start scoring drives.
“We have to learn the whole game, play all phases,” Andriano said. “We can do that.”