Bishop Guertin boys lacrosse holds off Pinkerton to reclaim D1 title (video)

EXETER - If Chris Cameron had an inspirational pregame speech to give his Bishop Guertin High School boys lacrosse team before Saturday's Division I championship game, the coach end up needing.

The Cardinals opened the game ready to play, and it was a good thing they did.

No. 2 Bishop Guertin led by as many as five goals in the third quarter, but had to make a defensive stand in the final minute of the game to hold off No. 1 Pinkerton for a 9-8 win at Bill Ball Stadium.

The title is the sixth in seven years for the Cardinals (20-1) and helped them avenge last year's championship game loss to the Astros (20-1), who were undefeated going into the final.

"I walked in the locker room and told them I had nothing to say," Cameron said. "I could see they were ready to play. The positive is we came out ready to play. We were ready to blow the doors off."

Nick Prunier led the Cardinals with four goals while Charlie O'Brien had three goals and two assists and Colin Casey stopped 15 shots, with several coming in the first half.

Bishop Guertin got to a 5-1 lead in the first half, and had leads of 8-3 and 9-4 in the second, before Pinkerton made things interesting at the end. The Astros held the Cardinals without a goal in the fourth, and scored three times in the final 5:30 - including an acrobatic goal by James Tulley with a minute remaining - to get within one.

After winning the ensuing faceoff, Pinkerton took a timeout with 48 seconds left, but turned the ball over and couldn't get back into the offensive end before time expired.

"We weren't struggling on offense as far as ball possession and as far as shots, but we were struggling as far as scoring goals," Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly said. "Give credit to our kids for coming on in the end and not letting up. We had a really good chance to tie it up.

"I'm proud of the way our kids played. A lot of other teams down 9-5 with some time left would have packed it in and gone home, and we just kept going and going. It was a great game in the fourth quarter, but we should have done a better job in the first half."

Pinkerton got three goals and two assists from Ryan Auger, while Tulley had a goal and two assists and Brett Dattilo and Chris Valentine had two goals each. Alex Sturgess made 14 saves for the Astros, including a handful late in the second half that helped keep Pinkerton in the game.

But after the Astros had gained some momentum back with two goals in the final 3:43 of the first half to make it 5-3, Bishop Guertin took it right back with a strange goal to open the third.

A shot by Bishop Guertin's Tim Hinrichs hit Sturgess while he was defending the near post and the rebound bounced across the front of the goal. Sticks from both teams swatted at it, and Sturgess tried to scoop it up, but the ball slowly rolled back into the goal.

That put the Cardinals up 6-3, and Prunier scored 59 seconds later to make it 7-3 just 1:40 into the second half.

"We got a freak goal to go up 6-3 and I knew if we could get up four or five, the pace of the game was going to be in our favor and it was so important to get up to 7-3 and we got to it," Cameron said. "That was huge. For 43 minutes, we played the best lacrosse we've played all year. But the last five was just, I think fatigue and Pinkerton was a big part of it."

Prunier scored again to make it 8-3 with 7:22 left in the third, and the Cardinals forced a turnover after Pinkerton won the ensuing faceoff. But Bishop Guertin couldn't clear and Valentine intercepted a pass back to Casey and scored into an open net to make it 8-4.

Bishop Guertin got the goal back on another score by Prunier with 5:38 left in the third, but that would be all the scoring the Cardinals would do.

A hold on Bishop Guertin's Brennan McInnis late in the quarter put the Astros a man up for 30 seconds, and Dattilo took advantage, scoring with 53.6 seconds left to get Pinkerton within four goals, 9-5, going into the fourth.

The Cardinals ended up taking four penalties in the game's final 14 minutes, and Pinkerton took advantage of two of them, as Valentine scored a man-up with 5:30 to go to make it 9-6.

Christian Trahan won the ensuing face for Bishop Guertin, but Sturgess came up with a save that led to a transition goal by Auger to make it 9-7 just 51 seconds later.

"All of a sudden, we were turning it over and taking penalties, and we were falling apart," Cameron said. "We made it very hard on ourselves.

"They took 10 years off my coaching career there. I think fatigue has a lot to do with it, but more than anything, it was Pinkerton. They just kept coming and they didn't quit. Playing for Coach O'Reilly, they're not going to quit, and knowing the character of those kids."

That character was perhaps best displayed on Tulley's goal, as the senior battled through three defenders and jumped into the air to score with 1:00 remaining to make it 9-8.

"James is a hard-nosed, tough player," O'Reilly said. "He's my best football player. He's the heart and soul of the lacrosse team. He needs Tommy John surgery. He hurt himself in the offseason in the winter and spent the first two weeks of the season incapable of holding his stick with his normal hand. He will have surgery after the season, but he was playing with one arm all year long."

The Astros won the faceoff and took a timeout with 48 seconds remaining, but lost the ball on the way to the goal. Hinrichs ended up with it and took off the other way, but he, too, couldn't hang on as he got close to the Pinkerton goal. Sturgess scooped up the ball, but could only get to midfield before time expired.

"We were focused on winning one," Cameron said. "In nine years, we've won seven titles. That certainly feels good. I'd say that's dominance. When you do it against the likes of Pinkerton, they never make it easy, as you saw from this game and last year's game."