Fast start helps Bishop Guertin boys lacrosse hold off Pinkerton (video)

NASHUA - The boys lacrosse regular season is old enough now that coaches can start to see trends forming with their teams.

After starting slow in a scrimmage and a couple of games, Chris Cameron was starting to wonder if he was seeing one with the Bishop Guertin High School boys lacrosse team.

The Cardinals coach isn't wondering now, not after the way they started Tuesday night against Pinkerton Academy.

Bishop Guertin scored three goals in the first two minutes, and led 8-1 midway through the second quarter, before the Cardinals had to gut out a 12-11 win over the Astros in Division I action at Stellos Stadium.

Pinkerton's Mason Drouin scored with 14.1 seconds remaining, following a turnover and a penalty by Bishop Guertin, to make it a one-goal game. But after winning the faceoff, the Astros final shot sailed over the net with 4.9 seconds left and Pinkerton turned it over just before the final buzzer.

"It’s early in the season, but sometimes, it can be a trend that we’re slow starters," Cameron said. "We came out and bucked that. We were calm and cool and focused and ready to play. We were sticking shots and James (Heitmiller) was making saves. I thought they played uncharacteristically sloppy. They were turning the ball over, stuff like that, so we took advantage of that."

Sean Cameron led Bishop Guertin (3-1, No. 2 in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) with four goals, including what ended up being the game-winner with 8:16 left in the game, when he picked the near top corner, just over the shoulder of Pinkerton goalie Jack Sweeney.

Dawson Clark added three goals while Ben Abladian and Joey Lupo had two goals apiece, as the Cardinals got a small measure of revenge after falling to the Astros in the D1 championship game to end the 2018 season. In the last four years, the loser of the regular-season meeting between the two teams has gone on to win the title.

Mason Drouin and Hunter Drouin each finished with four goals for Pinkerton (2-2, No. 1) while Connor McCormack had two goals and Mason Barbone also scored. Despite their comeback, which included outscoring Bishop Guertin 6-2 over the final 20 minutes, the Astros were unable to overcome their slow start.

"Didn’t go off the way we wanted to in the beginning of the game," Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly said. "We’ve got players, and as I said at least one time during the first half, it’s not ice hockey. You can be down by multiple goals in lacrosse and you can make up three goals in a matter of one minute. Just keep pushing.

"My only concern was that if they had letdown, we could have let this get away from us completely. It was a bad first quarter, not great second quarter either. We talked at halftime about we’ll come together again in June, so what’s the message you want to leave here."

Andrew Hassler got the start in goal for Pinkerton, but surrendered six goals before making his first save late in the opening quarter. On the other end, Heitmiller had four saves in the first and even set up a goal, bringing the ball out to midfield before hitting Lupo for a score that made it 5-0 with 7:37 left in the first.

"We were turning our saves into transition," Chris Cameron said. "We made saves, more in the first half than the second, but you’ve got to clear the ball. Early on we cleared the ball very well."

Sweeney came on to start the second quarter, and after giving up a goal to Abladian 20 seconds in, he allowed just five goals the rest of the way. Clark opened the scoring in the third, making it 10-4 Cardinals just 1:25 into the second half, but Pinkerton got the next three goals, two by Hunter Drouin, to get within three.

Lupo made it 11-7 with 4:36 to go in the third quarter, but Gennaro Marra - who controlled 20 of 27 faceoffs - won the first three faceoffs of the fourth for Pinkerton, and the Astros scored off each one, getting three goals in 48 seconds to cut Bishop Guertin's lead to 11-10.

But the Cardinals were able to get the ensuing faceoff, and after a penalty on Pinkerton's Jake Seccareccio, Sean Cameron scored on the manup to make it 12-10.

Marra won the faceoff and the Astros were able to maintain possession for most of the next three-plus minutes. Heitmiller came up with a couple of saves, but the Cardinals struggled to hang on to the ball until the final two minutes. Bishop Guertin was able to run the clock down, but with under 30 seconds remaining, Abladian lost possession when he was triple-teamed behind the Astros' net.

With the ball heading across the end line, Bishop Guertin's Chris Kiely was called for a penalty with 21.8 seconds to play and Mason Drouin capitalized.

"We’re going to see this, with this team being so young, it’s consistency," Chris Cameron said. "It’s the little things. We took a penalty in the last (30) seconds. All we had to do was let them have it and not let them in. We were undisciplined. If we want to beat the teams we want to beat, we’ve got to be better disciplined."

After Marra won the faceoff, Pinkerton took a timeout with 12.2 seconds remaining. Ryan Auger started with the ball near midfield and raced to the right of the goal, but his shot with 4.9 seconds left sailed over the net, and the Astros turned the ball over trying to get it back in front.

"Would have liked to get a last shot from (Mason Drouin) in there, but they did their job and kept him away from the ball," O'Reilly said. "We needed to get the answer to what the faceoff situation was going to look like, the new guys that he didn’t have last year, what do they look like. I got some questions answered."