Nashua South heads to Pinkerton for highly-anticipated division opener

There was plenty of stuff under the surface of Nashua High School South's 37-20 win over Dover in the first week of the 2011 football season.

Some of the stuff coach Scott Knight liked. Some of it, he didn't, and he hops the Panthers can improve on that before Saturday's showdown with Pinkerton Academy. The teams open the Division I season in Derry at 1 p.m.

"The score isn't always indicative of how you play," Knight said. "We did some good things. We had trouble on special teams. We got out of the flow of the game we wanted to have offensively. We didn’t run the ball as much as we would have liked. It was a little frustrating. It was a win and we played well in some areas, but there were some breakdowns."

Now South has to improve on the fly, as the Panthers head into what some are calling the game of the year in the division. For Knight, it's just another game.

"We’re going to play them either way," he said. "They’ll be different at the end of the year, and so will we. It’s an important league game, but is it a prelude to what everybody is saying? Not really. We’re going to evolve at some point. We’re very young on offense in a lot of areas. A couple of pieces are there from last year, but there are a lot of new pieces. It will take some time to find out niche, and this week is another step closer to that."

In some aspects, playing Pinkerton instead of a Division II team like Dover will be somewhat of an advantage for South. After playing the Astros at least once, year after year, the coaching staff at least has some kind of idea what the Panthers might be up against.

"We thought we were going to see something (against Dover) and we saw something different," Knight said. "That happens when you haven’t played a team in 20 years.

"We play Pinkerton, we play them every year, sometimes twice. We have a lot of different scenarios. There’s only so many things you can run. We can give our kids at least three different scenarios and we’ll be ready for all three."

The Panthers go into the game having had a few extra days to work. The Dover and South junior varsity teams played last Saturday, giving Knight an extra practice Monday to work with the whole team, and playing Saturday afternoon allowed the Panthers to wait until Friday to do their walk-through.

This game will be the first time South plays at Pinkerton since the Panthers beat the Astros in the division title game in 2008.

"That’s always a tough place to play," Knight said, "but last time we played there, it was a great game."