South stumbles in finale against Central

NASHUA –The Manchester Central High School football team looked like a playoff squad Friday night at Stellos Stadium.

Unfortunately, for the Little Green, it's Nashua South that will be going to the postseason.

Manchester Central dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, rushing for 342 yards while holding Nashua South to just 98 yards on the ground, and controlled the ball long enough to pull out a 23-8 win over the Panthers in the Division I regular-season finale for both teams.

KK Haliburton ran 25 times for 164 yards and a touchdown and Sam Graham added 136 yards and a score on 21 carries as the Little Green (5-3 in division, 7-3 overall) possessed the ball for 17 minutes and 33 seconds in the second half.

“If you keep giving them the ball, they’re going to score points,” Central coach Ryan Ray said of South’s offense. “That’s the secret to our offensive brilliance, try to keep the ball away from the really good offensive teams like South and try to use as much time as possible.”

While the Panthers (5-3, 6-4) seemed like they were winning the field-position battle throughout the game – South downed punts at Central’s 11, 6 and 1 in the first half – their inability to stop the Little Green turned into long scoring drives for Central.

“We didn’t come ready to play tonight,” South coach Scott Knight said. “I don’t have an answer right now. We had a lot of kids sick this week. We did not play well up front and I don’t think we were prepared to play.”

In the first half, the Little Green went up 13-0 on an 89-yard scoring drive, capped by a 53-yard run by Haliburton, and a 94-yard drive that was finished off by a Graham touchdown.

After South turned the ball over on downs at Central’s 12-yard line midway through the third quarter, the Little Green drove to the Panthers’ 15 before Stephen Grzywacz kicked a 32-yard field goal to make it a 16-0 game with 11:09 left to play.

South’s offense finally woke up on the next drive. Derek Paradis, who had 115 total yards of offense, carried the ball five times for 47 yards, including a 2-yard touchdown run. Keith Farkas’s pass to Brandon Gauthier was good and Central’s lead was down to 16-8 with 8:30 still left on the clock.

But by the time the Panthers got the ball back, only 38 seconds remained and South was once again down by two scores.

Central used 7:52 to go 80 yards on 16 plays with the drive ending on a touchdown run by Jared Chandler that gave the Little Green a 23-8 lead. On the drive, Central faced a first-and-20 and a first-and-15 and converted three third downs.

“Even on that last drive, we had them first-and-20 and we couldn’t get the ball back,” Knight said. “I thought if we did get it back, we were in a pretty good groove and I think we would have scored again. We didn’t get the ball and it’s frustrating.”

Despite the loss, South will still be in the playoffs, which start on Nov. 13, while Central will not be. The Little Green not only needed a win, but a Salem loss to get into the playoffs; Salem defeated Londonderry 55-32.

The Panthers will have to wait for the outcome of the Exeter-Nashua North and Manchester Memorial-Pinkerton games today to find out who they will play, but South will end up as either the second or third seed in the tournament.

“We’ve gotta watch film, lift and run and we’ll put it behind us (today),” Knight said. “We have a big game next week. If we play like this, we’ll get killed; if we play like we can, we’ll be there.”