Bishop Guertin boys lacrosse overcomes slow start to beat Exeter in D1 title game (video)

BEDFORD - When the first quarter of Saturday's Division I championship game ended, Chris Cameron looked up and saw something he may have never seen before.

The Cardinals had a zero on the scoreboard, an occurrence that not only hadn't happened to them this season, but the head coach wonder if ever.

Fortunately for Bishop Guertin, there was plenty of time to turn things around, and with the way the defense was playing and with JJ Murphy winning faceoffs, the Cardinals didn't panic.

A 5-0 run in the second quarter gave Bishop Guertin the lead at halftime and a 3-0 run to open the fourth gave the Cardinals all the advantage they needed in a 9-7 win over Exeter in the D1 finale at Bedford High School. The win completed the first undefeated season for Bishop Guertin (20-0, No. 1 in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) and was the program's first title since 2017 and 10th overall.

"It’s a lot of pressure going undefeated into that game," Cameron said. "It might be the first time we’ve ever been shut out in the first quarter. We wore them down but they didn’t go away. Team defense and faceoffs were key.

"We weren’t playing badly down 4-0. There’s something real to when you are undefeated and you get your first test like that. It’s real. You could feel it. Our message wasn’t intensity and energy. I knew we were going to come with that. It was more let’s play fast. That’s when we’re at our best. Play loose and disciplined. We grinded it out for a while."

Nick McGovern and Chris Heitmiller each had two goals and an assist for the Cardinals while Jon Krikorian had two goals and Michael Kiely had a goal and an assist. Declan Wilkie and Connor Bouvier added a goal apiece and Zach Connerty made nine saves.

Murphy turned in the biggest performance of the day, winning 18 of 20 faceoffs to consistently give the Cardinals possession, including in the fourth quarter when Exeter (17-3, No. 2) needed to get the ball back.

"There’s not much you can do when you can’t win them," Exeter coach Gerry Holly said. "We battled as hard as we could, we just couldn’t get it done. We needed possessions. We had a couple of chances to finish and we don’t get them, as did they, but we need to finish ours a lot more than they do. They can afford to make more mistakes and we can’t afford to make as many."

The Blue Hawks got two goals each from Connor Holly and Jake Mantell while Spencer Clark and Aiden Drunsic each had a goal and an assist. Hayden Lechner also scored and Ryan Tatman finished with 11 saves, including five in the first quarter to help Exeter get out to a 4-0 lead.

"The goalie did make a ton of saves," McGovern said. "One of our things is don’t let (the goalie) get hot and we let him get hot right at the beginning. I think that was a factor. I think we played a lot of defense. When we were shooting, he was making saves. We had to adjust, shot them where he wasn’t strong."

Bishop Guertin had a 44-25 edge in shots, including a 17-3 advantage in the second quarter, but in the first quarter, Exeter was able to dictate things.

Murphy won the opening faceoff, raced down field and fired a shot that rang off Tatman's helmet. The Blue Hawks got possession, and 11 seconds after a penalty on the Cardinals, Connor Holly scored to give Exeter a 1-0 lead. Mantell and Lechner scored 1:30 apart to make it 3-0 Blue Hawks and Mantell got his second with 33.4 seconds remaining in the first for a 4-0 lead.

Bishop Guertin won the faceoff and start to swing momentum its way in the final seconds of the quarter. An Exeter penalty early in the second gave the Cardinals a manup opportunity and Krikorian capitalized, getting them on the board with 9:52 left in the first.

Heitmiller and Krikorian then made it a one-goal game with back-to-back goals just eight seconds apart, forcing Exeter to take a timeout with 6:46 to go until halftime.

The Blue Hawks were able to hold on to the lead, but Heitmiller scored with 3:08 remaining in the half to tie it and the senior assisted on a goal by Bouvier that put Bishop Guertin up 5-4 with 2:06 to go. That's where it stood at halftime.

"I told the guys this game isn’t over," Gerry Holly said. "They’re going to go on a run and how do we respond when they start scoring goals?

"No matter what the score was, it was about the guys sticking to the game plan and continuing to do what we wanted to do defensively and what we needed to do offensively. We weren’t pushing the panic button down by one. We felt like we were right in it. We didn’t need to make many adjustments because I thought we were playing well."

Connor Holly tied the game 2:29 into the third quarter, but the Cardinals went back in front on Wilkie's goal, which came moments after a big groundball by Tim Kiely that allowed Bishop Guertin to keep possession. Clark tied the game at 6 with 2:24 to go in the quarter and that's where it stood going into the fourth.

McGovern found Michael Kiely for a goal just 34 seconds into the quarter and then the senior got a goal of his own 1:04 after that. He added another score with 5:47 left to give the Cardinals some extra breathing room.

"We knew this was going to be a four-quarter game," McGovern said. "It was our first complete game of the season. We played a full, 48 minutes as a team. We were moving the ball well. I don’t think one guy did anything that took over the game."

After a season in which Bishop Guertin scored 17.4 goals per game and had an average margin of victory of more than 13 goals coming into the game, this meeting with Exeter presented a challenge the Cardinals knew they would likely get.

"I knew how good they were," Cameron said. "I knew physically, they could match up with us. We’re a very athletic, big, long physical team. But we got a lot of stops early on and we couldn’t come up with the loose ball. If anything surprised us, it was the goalie making the saves. For them to hold us to nine goals, our lowest was (11), they weren’t going to go away. We had guys step up and play really well."