Bishop Guertin boys lacrosse holds off Pinkerton to remain undefeated

DERRY - There are times that the Bishop Guertin High School and Pinkerton Academy boys lacrosse teams bring out the best in each other.

But during the first half of Monday's regular-season game, the Cardinals' defense was showing some of its worst against the Astros.

Bishop Guertin was getting beat on fundamentals, but after refocusing at halftime, the Cardinals' defense allowed just four goals in the second half and held off a late Pinkerton charge to win 13-11 to remain undefeated in Division I.

After trailing by two goals at three different times in the first half, Bishop Guertin (8-0) broke a 9-9 tie in the second half with a 4-0 run. Brian Cameron and Ben Abladian each had three goals for the Cardinals, trailed for most of the first half after falling behind 2-0 in the game's 1:34.

"Defensively, we were very poor," Bishop Guertin coach Brian Cameron said. "We were doing things that were so uncharacteristic. We were getting back-doored. I take timeouts to stop runs in the first half, or if we’re having trouble with possession, but I took one just to settle us down because we were throwing the ball everywhere.

"I just told them to settle down. Part of it was, they’re saying their footing was bad, but we were ball watching. It’s fundamental stuff, and we’re a senior group back there. I didn’t make any changes at all, I said ‘let’s do what we do.’"

Bishop Guertin also got two goals each from Brennan McInnis and Sam Prunier. Joey Lupo, Drew Hailey and Kyle Fisher also scored and James Heitmiller made six saves.

Pinkerton (7-1) got four goals from Chad Teresky while Owen McCormack, Ryan Auger and Mason Drouin had two goals apiece. Tom Sweeney scored the game's first goal in his second game back from injury and Alex Sturgess made eight saves.

The Astros also got a dominant performance on faceoffs from Gennaro Marra, but in the second half, Pinkerton struggled at times to keep possession.

"We played with a lot of heart, lot of desire," Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly said. "I thought we did a lot of nice things, but we got beat on groundballs. That to me was the No. 1 thing. And they were able to get behind our people on the ride and clear the ball with relative ease. We cannot stay with a top-quality team if we’re going to give up possessions. Groundballs are possessions and faceoffs are possessions."

Pinkerton won four of the first five faceoffs in the game, and scored off the first two, getting goals from Sweeney and Teresky in the first two minutes of the game to take a 2-0 lead.

The Astros got the third faceoff, but turned the ball over, and McInnis turned it into a goal at the other end, and two minutes later, Abladian scored his first to tie the game - one of five ties during the game - off an assist from Brian Cameron.

"I didn’t know how they were going to play Brian right away, so you could see, the first possession, they sent a double (team) right away," Chris Cameron said. "He did a good job finding people. But then we needed to help him out creating some ball movement. Once we got a one-on-one matchup, he was able to score, but we didn’t get many of those. They sent the two, move it once, move it twice, and score. Our ball movement was really good."

Pinkerton took a 4-3 lead into the second quarter and Auger scored off an assist from Sweeney with 9:53 to go until halftime to make it a two-goal game. But the Cardinals won the faceoff and Lupo raced down the field for a goal just nine seconds later.

Hailey scored to tie the game at 5 with 6:57 remaining in the second, and after the teams traded goals, Brian Cameron got his first of the game to make it 7-6, giving the Cardinals their first lead.

It was short-lived, as Drouin answered for Pinkerton with 1:15 left in the first half and the teams went into the break tied at 7.

Cameron started the scoring in the third, giving Bishop Guertin an 8-7 lead 1:33 into the second half, and the teams traded goals over the next 1:24, with Auger tying it at 9. The Pinkerton junior was hit late on the goal, giving the Astros a man-up situation, but they were unable to capitalize and Cameron scored again to give the Cardinals a 10-9 lead.

That's where it stood until late in the quarter, when Prunier got the ball just outside the crease, and kept his balance long enough to find the back of the net to make it an 11-9 game after three. McInnis made it a three-goal game just 31 seconds into the fourth and Abladian got his third of the game with 10:11 remaining to make it 13-9.

Drouin got one back with 7:21 to play, but Bishop Guertin won the ensuing faceoff and started to kill the clock. The Cardinals were able to run it down to under two minutes when a too-many-men penalty gave Pinkerton a man-up situation.

"We like to play faster and faster, but on this field, we tried to kill some clock," Chris Cameron said.

While the Astros were unable to score with the advantage, they were able to keep possession, with Teresky scoring with 26.3 seconds left to make it 13-11, but that was as close as Pinkerton would get.

"You’ve got to understand that you can get two or three goals in a matter of a minute," O'Reilly said. "You don’t freak out when somebody is slowing the ball down with six or seven minutes to go in the game. There’s still plenty of time.

"We needed to press out. We’re still early in the season and we don’t have all our packages in. We need to work a little more on pressure defense when we need to get the ball back. Truth of the matter is we haven’t really had to do that this year. Our kids know what to do, but we haven’t practiced a lot of it. It’s better to have it June when you really need it."