WARSAW — Warsaw running back Will McGarvey was conspicuously absent from the field for most of Friday night’s game with Northridge.

The senior tailback — who reached the 2,000-yard career rushing mark in last week’s win over Elkhart Memorial — ran the ball just once before exiting the game early, and without McGarvey in the backfield, the Tigers struggled to gain ground against a physical Raiders defense. Junior running back Bryce Garner and senior quarterback Tristan Larsh tried to fill the void left by McGarvey, but Warsaw amassed just 75 rushing yards against Class 4-A, No. 8-ranked Ridge.

The result was a 24-6 Homecoming spoiler at Fisher Field.

“Will McGarvey is out. He’s in a boot so it’s not good,” said Warsaw head coach Phil Jensen. “Bryce is a good running back, but Will is a special running back, and with our inexperience at other spots that hurts. More of the burden falls onto Tristan, so they start ramping up the heat, and that just made it tough. They’re a good football team. They’re well-coached, and we’ve just got to keep working and getting better.”

Despite McGarvey’s early exit, the Tigers were still right in the thick of Friday’s Northern Lakes Conference contest at halftime, trailing by a tenuous 7-6 margin thanks to a strong effort by the Warsaw defensive unit and the foot of sophomore kicker Harrison Mevis.

The Raiders took an early lead when Nick Yoder recovered a Warsaw fumble at the Tigers’ 44 less than two minutes in, and the visitors needed just two plays to capitalize on the short field with a 34-yard touchdown run up the middle by senior back Conner Graber that gave his team a 7-0 lead after Brandon Mahony’s point-after kick at the 9:23 stop of the clock.

But the Tigers tightened it up on the defensive end, and, when Warsaw’s first drive into Ridge territory in the second quarter stalled out at the Raiders’ 21, Mevis split the uprights with a 38-yard field goal that cut the home team’s deficit to 7-3 with 2:54 to go before the break.

The Warsaw defense held again on Northridge’s next drive, and, after the Tigers recovered a blocked punt at the Ridge 33, the hosts got another big field goal from Mevis. With only 15.4 seconds remaining before halftime, the Raiders attempted to ice the sophomore with a timeout, but Mevis converted anyway, this time from 43 yards out. Mevis gave the Ridge sideline a hearty salute, and Warsaw went into the half trailing by a single point and with plenty of momentum.

“He did a great job for us tonight, got a couple field goals, got a touchback or two, punted the ball, changed the field position for us. That’s part of our formula that we have to have, and he’s living up to his end of it,” said Jensen of Mevis.

“We battled. Our defense kept doing what we’re designed to do, which is bend but not break and gave us some chances and blocked the punt, like we’d planned on, got a turnover. We’ve got to figure out a way to get seven out of those instead of three. But still, 7-6 at halftime against a really, really good football team, I’m pleased.”

But the Raiders got another big-play touchdown on the opening possession of the second half, held on Warsaw’s only possession of the third period and finished off a drive of more than 10 minutes with a long touchdown run early in the fourth to put some daylight between themselves and the Tigers.

The visitors needed just five plays to give themselves a little breathing room in the third as quarterback Nick Hooley connected with Brad Schwartz on a deep ball after Warsaw cornerback Zach Riley was tripped up covering the pass, and Schwartz rambled the remainder of the 66 yards up the Warsaw sideline and into the end zone to stake Ridge to a 14-6 advantage at the 10:38 mark of the quarter.

Warsaw drove the ball to the Raiders 38 on the ensuing possession, but that’s as far as the Tigers would get, and the visitors began a grinding, 17-play drive stretching 92 yards from the 7:37 stop of the third to the 9:32 mark of the fourth and capped off by Julius Graber’s 20-yard touchdown run around the right side.

The situation went from bad to worse for the home team when Riley was hit hard returning the ensuing kickoff up the Northridge sideline, and the ball squirted loose and took a bad bounce the wrong way. Ridge’s Rodney Allen recovered it at the Warsaw 20, and although the Tigers defense held, the Raiders were able to capitalize with a 37-yard field goal by Mahoney, a dagger that pushed the score to its final margin with 9:13 left to play.

“That was a great swing. Knowing our defense, where they’re playing at and the level they’re playing, at we feel really comfortable we got a two-score lead. We were able to get that, got that tack-on field goal, and just the way our defense was playing, that’s where we knew we needed to be,” said Northridge head coach Tom Wogoman.

With McGarvey out, the Raiders out-rushed Warsaw 169 yards to 75, led by Graber’s 80 yards on 10 carries. But perhaps more surprisingly, Northridge out-gained the Tigers through the air, too, as Hooley went 9-of-21 passing for 193 yards and a score compared to Larsh’s own creditable 10-of-23, 123-yard passing performance. Hooley and the Raiders moved to 5-0 — the program’s best start since opening 6-0 all the way back in 1975 — with a 3-0 NLC record.

It’s been a big turnaround from an 0-3 start last year, when an inured Hooley was forced to sit out most of the season. Friday’s win was also Ridge’s first over the Tigers in their past four tries.

“Nick threw the ball really well,” Wogoman said. “We said we wanted to throw about 15. I know we were well over that. I don’t know how many we threw, but just a good collective effort.”

“I’m really happy for the Hooley kid for everything that he went through with that injury and then battling back last year. He’s doing a great job managing that offense,” Jensen said. “They do what they do and they do it really well, and that’s a credit to them.”

While the Raiders continue their unbeaten streak and return home to face 4-A No. 4 NorthWood in a battle of Top 10 teams next week, the Tigers dip to 2-3 and 1-2 in the NLC a week after earning Jensen his 100th head coaching win in last week’s win over Memorial. Warsaw will try to regroup at Goshen (1-4, 1-2 NLC) next week. With two losses in the NLC and now sitting in the lower half of the NLC standings at the midpoint of the season, the Tigers can’t dwell on the negatives, says Jensen.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re all in, everybody is ready to go and we don’t let the negativity or the disappointment start to seep in and create other problems. We’ve got to stick together,” he said.