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| By Dave Haley, Posted 11-16-2011 | ||
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Division II (2) Dover at (1) Bishop Guertin Box score of the first match-up: http://www.nhsportspage.com/football/game_stats.php?Ateam_id=498&Hteam_id=492&game_id=11259&year=2011-2012 While sitting with friends at a restaurant in Dover after watching last Saturday's St. Thomas/Windham championship game a steady stream of people began making their way into the lounge from the just concluded Dover/Spaulding semifinal. People were in incredibly high spirits and part of that was the Dover win (the Spaulding crowd had headed back to Rochester) but a big part was what they had just witnessed. More a few people could be heard calling the 24-21 Dover win the best high school football game they had ever seen. People kept talking about ‘that little short kid' who knocked home a 29 yard field goal in front of over 1,000 people to win the game as the clock expired. Just as many people talked about Spaulding and how hard they had fought, how well they had played. You go to these games and you take in the scene; the band, the cheerleaders, the parents with their signs, the kids leaving everything on the field, the coaches leading them. It's also nice to hear how a game like that affects people after it is over and it became very clear that this was a game that people will talk about for years to come. Dover and Spaulding, amazingly, had never met in the playoffs and as we wrote about last week, this Spaulding team was much like the red hot Dover team that traveled in the playoffs to Winnacunnet last November. Both of those teams went home losers on the final play of the game. Tyler Zabkar was an efficient 13 for 19 with 207 yards passing and the Green Wave found different ways to get the ball in the hands of playmakers Colin Shaughnessy and Taylor Curry. Dover never trailed but after falling behind 14-0 Spaulding never went away and they battled until sophomore Cam Rewucki buried his first field goal of the season as the clock expired. Setting up a trip to Nashua this weekend to face the defending champions. Bishop Guertin found themselves in their own dogfight against Timberlane Saturday as the 4 seed played one of its best games of the season. BG got some strong running from Zach Mailloux and a key pass play from Bob Fahey to CJ Boykins to win a back & forth battle with Evan Bidgood and the Owls. They now face a Dover team they have been watching in the rearview mirror for three months. It's an experienced Dover team that expected to make it this far and would like to make up for a 21-6 loss to BG earlier in the season. When Fahey is healthy and able to play quarterback this is a different team and on Saturday it was the offense picking up the defense for a change. Dover allowed a division low 14.3 points a game this season and is comfortable in a low scoring affair. Ken Osborn's team needs to be the better unit at the line of scrimmage and keep players like Boykins from putting BG in good field position on special teams. It was Boykins punt return earlier in the season at Dover that changed the course of that game. In four of the six divisions it came down to #1 vs. #2 on the final Saturday and that will be the case here in Division II. A veteran quarterback leads a confident and experienced team to Nashua to try and take the crown from the champs. You can bet that a win at BG on Saturday will have them gathering to talk about this Dover football team all winter long.