Bishop Guertin's Matt Bayne takes a shot during Thursday's win over Pinkerton.
DERRY – After two weeks of games this spring, Chris Cameron still feels that three of the top boys lacrosse teams in the state are Hanover, Exeter and Pinkerton.
So where exactly does that leave Cameron’s Bishop Guertin High School team?
Following Thursday’s 15-6 win over Pinkerton, the Cardinals have defeated the top three teams in Division I by a combined score of 45-14. Throw in Tuesday’s 9-3 win over Needham, Mass., and BG is 4-0 overall against some solid competition.
“We took a big jump toward that No. 1 seed in the playoffs,” Cameron said. “That’s always our goal, but we never get there this early because we usually play Pinkerton later in the season. That game usually determines it. Playing this early in the season, we’re going to have to keep our guys motivated.”
The Cardinals will get two big tests this weekend. On Saturday, they head to Connecticut to face Fairfield Prep. That’s followed by a trip to Metuchen, N.J., to take on St. Joseph’s.
“We’re going down to play Fairfield Prep, and then we’re going to play St. Joseph’s, which is one of the top 10 teams in the country,” said Cameron, who’s own team is ranked fifth nationally by MaxPreps. “They’re the top team in New Jersey.
“We played some pretty good teams. It (BG’s ranking) might be a little inflated, but we’ll find out this weekend.”
Against Pinkerton, the Cardinals got off to a slow start and led by just one goal at the end of the first period and were up 6-2 at the end of the first half.
But in the third quarter, BG started scoring in bunches. After the Astros made it 6-3 on a goal by Mike McStravock, the Cardinals got a goal each from Erik Kelly, Matt Thistle and Adam Hall in a span of 1:36 to put BG up 9-3.
“We came out, we didn’t really game plan that much,” Cameron said. “We were going to play our game. We missed a few little wrinkles that we did as far as guarding them. We weren’t dialed in mentally. We were a little revved up for the game.”
Pinkerton called a timeout after Hall’s goal, with 6:22 left in the third quarter. The Astros got a goal from Mike Auger right out of the timeout, and Auger added another score two minutes later to make it a 9-5 game.
But the Cardinals went on another scoring spree, putting in three more goals before the end of the quarter to make it 12-5. BG had little trouble putting the game away in the fourth.
“They did a good job calling a timeout and they got two goals out of it,” Cameron said. “We gave them two goals, but we settled down after that. We put the pedal back down. We put a run on them and we’re going to do that to teams all year.”
Tom Labadini finished with four goals for the Cardinals and Matt Bayne added two scores. Alex Eaton had a goal and three assists while Peter Hardy, Jack Krzyston, Thistle, Kelly, Beau Brooks, Hall, Paul Spinney and Peter Fucci had a goal each.
BG goes out of state over the weekend and returns to Division I play on April 27 at 2 p.m. against Londonderry at Stellos Stadium.