Fast start helps lift Bishop Guertin football past Nashua South
There were two numbers that Jeff Moore repeated to high Bishop Guertin High School football team throughout practice this week.
NASHUA - There were two numbers that Jeff Moore repeated to high Bishop Guertin High School football team throughout practice this week.
The first was 63, the number of points the Cardinals scored in a blowout win over Nashua South last year.
The second was 76, the number of points South scored in its opening win over Spaulding.
"We hung 63 on them last year and they're going to be upset and angry, and they scored 76 last week," Moore said. "Remember that because we don't want that to happen to us. They're gunning for us. We talked about that all week, before and after practice."
Instead, it was Bishop Guertin scoring the points early, as the Cardinals jumped out to a 21-0 lead early in the second quarter and held off South for a 41-28 win Friday night at Stellos Stadium.
Leading the way for the Cardinals (2-0) was quarterback Sam Raitt, who completed 23 of 31 passes for 402 yards with five touchdowns and two interceptions. Raitt also ran 18 times for 44 yards and another score.
Sarveen Shafian-Rad caught 10 passes for 211 yards, including two touchdowns in the second half, while Dylan Fagan had eight catches for 148 yards and three touchdowns, all of which came in the first half.
"It was our progressions on some of those plays," Raitt said of each receiver having a big half. "The way our coaches were seeing the coverage, we saw the middle open, and that's what I hit Dylan a lot on."
South (1-1) struggled with assignments on defense, particularly in the secondary, including the second Cardinals' touchdown, where Fagan was wide open over the middle for an easy touchdown.
"We had some alignment issues and they took advantage of it," South coach Scott Knight said. "When we lined up right, we were OK.
"We had a couple of sophomores back there and a few issues with the linemen, but once we got it squared away, we were OK. You can't make mistakes in big games like that."
Despite falling behind by three scores early, South was twice able to get within in a touchdown in the third quarter, but the Panthers couldn't come up with a stop on defense.
Sean Holland led South with 158 yards rushing and a touchdown on 20 carries, and was also 9 of 20 passing for 79 yards and two touchdowns, both of which went to Max Osgood (four catches, 39 yards).
But the Panthers didn't have possession much in the first quarter, after going three-and-out on their first drive and then losing a fumble on the kickoff following the Cardinals' first touchdown. That was a 43-yard catch-and-run by Fagan, and Bishop Guertin scored seven plays after the fumble on another touchdown pass to Fagan to make it 14-0.
South again couldn't get the offense going and tried a fake punt that came up short, giving the Cardinals the ball back at midfield. Bishop Guertin took just seven plays to find the end zone, scoring on a 44-yard touchdown from Raitt to Fagan.
To that point, the Cardinals had run 26 plays to just seven for the Panthers, and held the edge in yards, 182-4.
"We knew they're a good team and we watched a lot of film of them all week," Raitt said. "That was a good cushion. You've got to keep scoring and get as many stops on defense. That's my job as quarterback, when the defense makes a stop, we've got to drive down the field and score."
The Panthers answered with a 12-play, 65-yard drive that ended with a 16-yard scoring pass from Holland to Osgood to make it 21-7, and that's where it stood at halftime.
After the break, South needed just two plays to make it a one-score game, cutting the lead to 21-14 on a 50-yard touchdown run by Holland just 37 seconds into the half. But the Cardinals responded with a 12 play drive that went 76 yards and ate up almost half of the third quarter.
Bishop Guertin caught a break on the possession as well. On a first down at the South 10, the Cardinals fumbled and South recovered, but a flag had been thrown at the start of the play and the Panthers were called for an illegal substitution. Raitt scored from a yard out six plays later to put Bishop Guertin back up by two touchdowns.
"We had some critical things," Knight said. "We had that substitution issue down there when we recovered that fumble. We fumbled a kickoff. We had a couple of third-and-longs we didn't do our job. We had a blown assignment on that funnel screen. We have to play smarter in those areas."
