Londonderry returns to D1 football final with big win over Pinkerton (video)

DERRY - Jimmy Lauzon could already hear the second guessing if the changes the Londonderry High School football team made for Saturday's Division I semifinal against Pinkerton Academy didn't work.

Fortunately for the Lancers coach, they did. Boy, did they.

No. 4 Londonderry pounced early, capitalizing on a turnover in the opening minutes of the game to take control and then blowing it open in the second half, on the way to a 42-7 win over No. 1 Pinkerton.

The Lancers will now play in the D1 championship game for the third year in a row, and fourth time in five years, when they face No. 3 Bedford at 1 p.m. on Nov. 25 at a site to be determined.

But after losing to the Astros during the regular season - a loss that snapped Londonderry's seven-game winning streak against its rivals - Lauzon knew his team had to do something different on offense to change the outcome this time.

In the preliminary round against Windham, the Lancers began experimenting with senior lineman Ty Miles, who has verbally committed to play at Holy Cross, lined up in the backfield as an extra blocker.

Against Pinkerton, Miles lined up behind the line of scrimmage exclusively.

"We didn’t handle them well in the first game, so we felt like adding a sixth lineman and putting Ty (Miles) in the backfield was the way to go," Lauzon said. "It would secure some inside run presence. They always set a good edge, so they’re going to have to compensate to the inside run game, and they did. We tried to build it to our strengths as opposed to what they do well."

It worked, as Londonderry ran for 253 yards and five touchdowns, getting rushing scores from Conor Williams, Alex Villa, Cam Brutus, Jake Schena and Adrian Cruz. Seth Doyon added an 87-yard kickoff return to open the second half to round out the Lancers' scoring.

"We’re putting all of our stock into this game plan, we are going to look not smart if it doesn’t work," Lauzon said. "(Miles) is such a good blocker in space, it’s so tempting to let him move around. We went with it, felt like it could help us, and it did."

As well as Londonderry's changes on offense worked, it was the defense that was the catalyst, shutting down Pinkerton's running game for most of the day.

The Lancers (10-1) recovered an Astros' fumble on the third play from scrimmage, and two plays later, Williams scored on a 33-yard touchdown run for a 7-0 lead just 1:17 into the game.

Londonderry's second possession was a 15-play, 90-yard drive that took up almost eight minutes and ended with a 5-yard scoring run by Villa.

"That’s the game of football right there," Lauzon said. "Get good field position and capitalize when you do it, it’s huge. That was big and the 16-play drive, when we killed the clock, it felt like we were taking the air out of them."

The Astros (10-1) finished with 156 yards on the ground, getting 81 yards and a touchdown from Matt Morrison, but 57 of those yards came after the game was in running time. Ryan Catineau added 68 yards rushing.

Pinkerton also suffered a big blow when Caden Michaud left late in the first half after going down hard on his right shoulder. The senior was in a sling at the start of the second half.

"Quite honestly, before he got hurt, we were in trouble," Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly said. "We just weren’t running the ball. When he went down, that caused all kinds of problems. When you substitute kids who aren’t really sure what they’re supposed to do and all that kind of stuff. That’s part of coaching, you can put that on me. Just not a good day.

"It was very apparent midway through the first half that it was going to turn out this way. They were just better than us and they deserved to move on, which is an understatement."

As bad as the first half might have looked for the Astros, they were down 14-0 at halftime, as they were in the regular season.

"We talked at halftime that we were in this boat last time (in the regular season)," O'Reilly said. "The difference was we were playing better defense the first game that we played them. We talked about, they’re getting the ball now, like they did last time, we need to make a stop and get back in it."

But Doyon's kick return to open the second half put Pinkerton down three scores.

The Astros were forced to punt on their first possession of the second half and the Lancers found the end zone again, getting a 7-yard touchdown run from Brutus to make it 27-0 with 5:35 left in the third.

An interception by Villa on the next Pinkerton possession gave Londonderry the ball at the Astros' 19, and five plays later, Schena scored from 7 yards out. Cruz ran in the conversion to make it 35-0 with 1:15 to go until the fourth quarter.

"From the naked eye, it looked good, it looked strong," Lauzon said. "There were a couple of times we sputtered out. Outside of that, I thought the guys did great. It looked like they executed the game plan on both sides of the ball. Defensively, we were really sound, but aggressive at the same time."