Pinkerton football shuts down Salem to return to D1 championship

SALEM - When the Pinkerton Academy football team faced Salem High School in the regular season, the Blue Devils found a weakness they could exploit in the Astros' defense.

After that loss, Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly felt confident that if the teams met again, things would be different.

The No. 4 Astros proved their coach right Saturday, as they bottled up No. 3 Salem's rushing attack and cruised to a 30-7 win over the Blue Devils in the Division I semifinals. Pinkerton returns to the championship game for the second year in a row - and 12th time in 15 years - where it will face Bedford at 6 p.m. on Nov. 17 at the University of New Hampshire.

Salem ran for almost three hundred yards in the first meeting, but on Saturday, Pinkerton's defense held the Blue Devils to just 73 yards, including 10 yards on 15 carries in the first half.

While the Astros' defense didn't create any turnovers, it did force five three-and-outs and forced the ball over on downs four times. Salem had just one first down in the first half, and four for the game, with two coming on the late touchdown drive.

"We changed up our defensive scheme," O'Reilly said. "We said we’ll be fine. We’ll switch to the scheme that we need. That power game you saw from them the first time around, that’s shame on us. We were in a bad scheme for that and we took care of that."

Pinkerton (9-2) also got another huge game from senior Gannon Fast, as he finished with 169 yards rushing and two touchdowns, and also recovered a blocked punt in the end zone for a score that made it 24-0 with 11:14 left in the game. Nick Lombard added 83 yards and a score on the ground and Gennaro Marra had 45 yards and a touchdown, as well.

The Astros ran for 303 yards as a team, and in the second half, kept Salem's offense off the field. The Blue Devils had the ball for just 6:28 after halftime, and had just one drive that lasted longer than a minute.

"We did some good things, but you’ve got to give credit to Pinkerton," Salem coach Rob Pike said. "They played better than we did. That’s the bottom line, they just played better.

"They have a great defense. We couldn’t get anything going on offense. Their kids ran to the ball and got off blocks. Defensively, all across the board, all 11 were good."

Fast started the scoring on Pinkerton's first drive with a 39-yard touchdown run that made it 6-0 with 8:16 left in the first quarter. The Astros looked like they might get more right before halftime, as they drove to the Salem 2-yard line, but the Blue Devils defense held and got the ball back with 48.9 seconds left in the half.

But with all two timeouts left, the Astros forced Salem to make a decision on fourth down from its own 3, and Kyle Poulin's pass to Michael Ference was incomplete with 1.3 still on the clock. Pinkerton's offense took over, but the Salem defense dropped Fast for a loss to end the half.

Pinkerton started the second half like it did the first, getting a 48-yard touchdown run from Lombard to take a 12-0 lead.

A 17-yard run on first down by Will Michaud got Salem into Pinkerton territory on the ensuing drive, but the offense stalled and turned it over on downs at the Astros' 37. Pinkerton answered with a 13-play drive that took up over six minutes and ended with Marra's 10-yard touchdown run to make it 18-0.

"We set them up running to the strong side the entire first half, and then they started slanting to it and jamming up inside," O'Reilly said of changes to Pinkerton's rushing attack in the third quarter. "We came out in the second half and went to the weak side. We went away from our power guys."

Pinkerton got the ball back when a line-drive kickoff hit a Salem player and bounced back to the Astros, but the Blue Devils' defense held, forcing a punt on the final play of the third quarter.

Taking over at their own 20, the Blue Devils were called for a false start and an unsportsmanlike penalty on their first two plays. Another false start and an incomplete pass made it made it fourth and 29 from the 1-yard line.

Salem's Zach Gibbons set up at the back of the end zone to punt, but Pinkerton's Allen Gault got through the line and blocked the kick, and Fast picked it up in the end zone for the score.

"They made some big plays in that third quarter and we didn’t respond well," Pike said. "The mistakes we made down here when it got to 18-0, we just went backwards on that drive and then had the punt blocked. It was execution and they did it better than we did."

Fast added his third touchdown on a 16-yard run with 8:23 remaining to make it 30-0, and after the teams traded punts, Salem got on the board on a 27-yard touchdown pass from Poulin to Donovan Abraham with 3:20 to play.

Poulin finished the day 6 of 15 passing for 93 yards and the touchdown, and Ference caught two passes for 67 yards.