Bishop Guertin boys lacrosse holds off Pinkerton's second-half charge

NASHUA - The Bishop Guertin High School and Pinkerton Academy boys lacrosse teams played one solid game between the two of them Monday night at Stellos Stadium.

The Cardinals exploded on offense in the first half, taking a 10-3 lead into halftime, but had to withstand a furious second-half charge by the Astros to take a 14-11 in a Division I game.

Bishop Guertin got out to leads of 5-0 and 8-2 before scoring twice in the final minute of the first half to go up by seven goals at the break. While the Cardinals were hoping to have the same intensity in the second half, it was Pinkerton that came out firing, and was perhaps just a few defensive stops away from handing Bishop Gueritn its first loss.

Instead, the Cardinals (9-0) likely wrapped up the top seed in the division, while the Astros (7-3) fell for the second time in three games.

"If it wasn't for the first six minutes of the game, I'd have said we played very poorly," Bishop Guertin coach Chris Cameron said. "I think they thought it was over, but with Pinkerton, there was no way. They have so much pride and heart, there was no way they were going away.

"At the half, 10-3 is tough to come back from, but I think our guys thought it was over. I asked them to come out with the same intensity in the second half, but we didn’t see it. You've got to hand it to Pinkerton."

Tom Hurley led the way for the Cardinals with five goals and an assist. Dom St. Laurent added four goals and an assist while Connor Donahue had a goal and two helpers and Gage Savigny finished with two scores.

Pinkerton got five goals and two assists from Sean Delea, while Jake Lisauskas had two goals and two assists and Evan Sweeney also had two goals.

"I cannot remember the last time a team unloaded on us as quickly as they did (Monday)," Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly said. "I'm actually very pleased with the way we came back in the second half. It's something we talked about at halftime, but talk is cheap.

"We talked about making it a nothing-nothing game and setting up things for June, and our kids responded in the second half. That was more indicative of what I thought would happen."

The Cardinals opened by scoring five goals in the first 5:19 of the game, and they went up 8-2 just 26 seconds into the second quarter. But the Astros were able to increase the physical play after that and maintained possession for long stretches.

A goal by Brett Dattilo with 10:47 left in the second made it 8-3, and it seemed like that was where it would stand at halftime when St. Laurent scored in transition with 38.2 seconds to go. The Astros won the draw, but turned the ball over, and the Cardinals quickly got the ball down the field for a goal by Hurley with five-tenths of a second remaining to make it 10-3.

"Some of our kids weren't used to the speed of some of their kids," O'Reilly said. "They just got some steps on us and they unloaded on us. Our goalie had no chance in most of the goals in the first half. They were in too close, so it was just a matter of playing better team defense.

"The breaks didn't seem to go our way. That goal just before halftime didn't help. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong in the first half."

Cameron thought the quick goals at the end of the half could be a back breaker.

"When we get up on teams like that, we've seen teams go away," he said. "They didn't go away. Pinkerton outplayed us for the rest of the game. Part of that was that they played their game. They played very physical, they took a lot of penalties, they played aggressive."

Pinkerton got the first two goals of the third, cutting the lead to 10-5 with 6:24 to play in the frame. A goal by St. Laurent pushed the lead back to six, but the Astros scored twice in the final minute, including a goal by Lisauskas with 18.4 seconds remaining that made it 11-7.

Bishop Guertin made it 12-7 just 31 seconds into the fourth, but Pinkerton answered with two goals to make it 12-9 with 9:21 to go. The Cardinals began to work the clock, and added two more goals to twice go back up by four. Todd Billetter added a goal for the Astros to make it 14-11 with 2:09 left, but Bishop Guertin was able to kill most of the clock to hang on for the win.

"I almost went to the kill earlier, but I wanted to see if we could settle ourselves down," Cameron said. "A win is a win."