Portsmouth scores quickly in win over Milford

MILFORD – If the Milford High School football team was going to have a chance at beating Portsmouth Friday night, the Spartans were going to need to control the football.

Milford did, possessing the ball for nearly 32 minutes, but it still wasn’t enough.

Portsmouth scored two touchdowns in 89 seconds in the third quarter to turn a seven-point advantage into a 28-7 lead, and the Clippers rolled to a 35-14 win over Milford in Division III action.

Bill Hartmann completed 14 of 18 passes for 213 yards and three touchdowns for the Clippers, including one to Billy Lane and another to Anthony Kurylak in the third quarter after the Spartans had made it a 14-7 on the opening drive of the half. Lane added 128 yards and two touchdowns on the ground to go with two catches for 55 yards and a score.

“They’re a great football team, they’ve got a lot of talent out there,” Milford coach Keith Jones said. “The whole game plan when you play these guys is to keep them off the field. I don’t know what the time of the possession was, but it wasn’t where I wanted it to be.”

The Spartans (2-1 in division, 3-2 overall) had four drives of double-digit plays, each of which lasted at least five minutes, but only two of those drives resulted in points. One drive in the first half went for 15 plays in 9:05, but ended when Milford turned the ball over on downs at Portsmouth’s 14-yard line.

After that drive, the Clippers (4-0, 4-1) needed just 88 seconds to go 73 yards and score on a 16-yard touchdown run by Lane to give Portsmouth a 14-0 lead going into halftime.

Despite the two scoring drives, the Clippers weren’t happy with what they were doing on offense in the first half.

“We were disappointed in what we had done, but they’re a quality opponent,” Portsmouth coach Bill Murphy said. “Whenever we’ve played Milford, it’s always a dogfight. They’re well-prepared and well-coached.”

The Spartans took the opening kickoff of the second half and went 70 yards on 10 plays, taking up 5:18, to get on the board. Bud Theriault hit Harrison Urda on a 10-yard touchdown pass to make it 14-7, as Milford threw the ball on the final three plays of the drive. For each of those plays, including a fourth-and-5 pass Theriault completed to Urda, the Spartans lined up in the shotgun.

“It was a little bit of a curveball,” Murphy said. “I’m sure they thought it would be beneficial to them. We have a big front line, maybe we were wearing them down a bit and they tried something new.”

After Portsmouth went back up by two scores, Milford came out in the shotgun on its next drive, and gained just two yards before throwing two incompletions. The Spartans were forced to punt after taking just 39 seconds off the clock.

Two plays later, Hartmann hit Kurylak for a 56-yard touchdown that put the Clippers up 28-7.

“If you’re going to beat a team like this, three yards and a cloud of dust only goes so far,” Jones said. “When it’s not working, which early on we weren’t getting first downs, we needed to open it up a little bit. When you’re a wishbone team, everyone knows on third-and-long you’re going to pass the ball. We had to open it up a little.”

Lane added a 36-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, and Milford’s Kyle Higgins scored from 11 yards out to finish off the scoring.

Theriault finished the day going 8-of-15 for 90 yards and a touchdown, and also had 46 yards rushing. Joe Albina led the Spartans on the ground, picking up 94 yards on 17 carries.