Defense at the forefront of Pinkerton's victory

In a year when stopping the opponent seemed like a thing of the past in Division I football, it was the best defensive team that went home with the championship.

Pinkerton Academy was tops during the regular season on the defensive side of the ball, allowing a division-low 18 points a game. In fact, the Astros were the only team to allow less than 20 points per game during the regular season.

Only three times did Pinkerton (10-2 overall) allow more than its average in a game – in a 33-7 loss to Nashua North on Sept. 18, in a 38-31 win over Salem the following week and in a 34-25 win over Manchester Memorial in the regular-season finale.

In the playoffs, the Astros stepped it up another notch, limiting Salem (43 points per game) to just 14 points in the semifinals and North (34.8) to just seven in Saturday’s championship game.

The Astros shut the Titans (7-5) out in the second half, and that included four trips into the red zone for North in which it didn’t get any points. The Titans were penalized three times once they got inside the Pinkerton 20, including a holding call that negated a touchdown.

“It must have been four or five times that we must have stopped them,” Pinkerton coach Brian O’Reilly said. “Our defense has bent and bent and bent and does not give up scores. Somehow, it manages to make it happen.”

Every time North got within striking distance, the Pinkerton defense rose to the occasion. Perhaps the best of those plays was on a fourth-and-goal on the 4, with North trailing and a little more than four minutes to go in the game.

Brandon Karkhanis had Andre Williams open on a short route, but Pinkerton’s Kevin Davies got a hand on the ball and deflected the ball about 10 yards into the backfield.

“If you told me they were going to hold us to seven points, I’d have said you’re crazy,” North coach Jason Robie said. “We knew it was going to be a defensive game and we played pretty well. Two very good teams going at it. If we played 10 times, we’d probably go 5-5.”

Too much laundry

North ran a total of 46 plays on Pinkerton’s end of the field, and the Titans were 6-of-17 on third – including a conversion on a penalty and their lone touchdown – and just 1-of-6 on fourth down.

But perhaps the most striking statistic are the numbers 19 and 161 – the number of penalties and penalty yardage for both teams.

“This is how championship games are supposed to be, although this was pretty sloppy by both teams,” Robie said. “You hate to see it in the championship game. If they’re legitimate calls, then they get called. We traded penalties at bad times.”

Pinkerton drew 12 flags for 110 yards, and that doesn’t include a holding call that North declined in the second quarter that would have given the Astros and third-and-41 from the Titans’ 43-yard line. Instead, Pinkerton had a fourth-and-16 from the 21 and turned the ball over on downs.

On the ensuing drive, North was about to go three-and-out, but Pinkerton was called for too many men on the field. For some reason, the officials marked off 15 yards on the penalty, giving the Titans a first down at their 37.

Five plays later, on a third-and-21, the Titans got another break when Pinkerton was called for pass interference to give them a first down. But North returned the favor on second down, getting flagged for a false start.

Late in the first half, Pinkerton was whistled for two false starts in a row and also had to punt three times on that drive after a false start and a hold brought the play back.

“I told the kids at halftime, based on the unbelievable mistakes we made, all the penalties – and let’s be fair, the fans don’t think so but it wasn’t the officials fault, those we’re our fault – we just told them that (North) should be up,” O’Reilly said. “We’ve got to come out and stop the nonsense and we come out and get two 5-yard penalties. I don’t know if our inexperience was catching up to us, but for a while I was wondering if we were even showing up to play.”

While Pinkerton had the quantity, North’s penalties were quality – or better yet, costly.

The Titans were flagged seven times for 51 yards, including two personal foul calls on Pinkerton’s first drive that led to a touchdown. And all three of North’s second-half penalties came in the red zone.

“The penalties killed us,” Robie said. “We had an opportunity to maybe go up by two scores and it didn’t work out that way.”

Too many drops

With the Astros putting seven guys in the box to slow down Andre Williams (32 carries, 98 yards), Karkhanis needed to have a big day for the Titans.

The senior quarterback did, but unfortunately, his receivers can’t say the same. Every North player who had the ball thrown to him had at least one drop, and that included Anton Marinchik, who caught nine balls for 130 yards and a touchdown.

Karkhanis finished by completing 16-of-32 passes for 160 yards, but he could have had a lot more. Pinkerton was leaving the Titans open underneath, and that’s where many of North’s drops came.

“That’s not typical of us,” Robie said. “Typically, when you put seven guys in the box, we’re going to move the football. Our short pass is like a run and it’s been effective for us all year long. Brandon put the ball where it needed to be, we just dropped the ball a little. Marinchik had some great catches.”

On the touchdown, Marinchik caught the ball in traffic and slipped a tackle before outracing Pinkerton’s Luke Somers to the end zone. His best catch came in the fourth quarter, with North facing a fourth-and-4 at Pinkerton’s 34.

Karkhanis had success throwing for most of the day despite the wind, but on this pass, a gust picked up as the ball went to Marinchik. Instead of a spiral, the ball wobbled and changed directions, but the North senior still made the catch to keep the drive alive.

Three-peat?

North was one of three teams on Saturday to lose its second-straight championship game. Winnacunnet also lost to Bishop Guertin in the Division II final for the second time in as many years, and Portsmouth fell to Souhegan in Division III for the third straight year.

This was the second time in North’s history that the football team made it to the playoffs, and was the second time in a championship game.

“I feel bad for our seniors,” Robie said. “They wanted to go out as champions. They need to keep their heads held high. Our program has come a long way in such a short period of time.

“There are seven other teams (in Division I) who would have liked playing in this game, but weren’t. Right now that doesn’t matter to a lot of our guys, but maybe over time, they’ll come to realize what their accomplishments were as a whole.”

For Pinkerton, it’s the 12^th title in school history, and the 10^th since O’Reilly took over as head coach in 1985. Since that season, Manchester Central (six), Concord (three) and Londonderry (two) are the only other schools to win more than one title. A unified Nashua won in 1997 and Nashua South also won in 2008.

The Astros have also played in the title game 12 times over that 26-year span; Central is next on that list with eight and none since 2004. A Nashua team has played in nine title games during that stretch, two each for South and North in the last four years.