Duxbury pulls away late against Whitman-Hanson in battle of playoff-bound teams
WHITMAN – As playoff tune-ups go, this one hit all the right notes. For both sides.
The Duxbury High football team pulled away in the fourth quarter Friday night for a 42-22 win over Patriot League rival Whitman-Hanson in a matchup of teams headed to their respective MIAA state tournaments next week. Both the Green Dragons and the Panthers left the field feeling good about their chances.
Duxbury, of course, was feeling a little better, having completed a perfect 7-0 regular season that secured the No. 1 seed (by a wide margin) in the Division 4 playoffs. The Dragons got standout performances, once again, from the usual cast of characters.
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Quarterback Matt Festa was 13-of-19 passing for 331 yards and three touchdowns. He now has 21 TDs and just 3 interceptions on the season. He also added a 3-yard TD run that capped the scoring with 2:12 left.
Running back Alex Barlow rushed 20 times for 132 yards and two TDs and caught 3 passes for 101 yards and a score.
And receiver Chris Walsh caught 7 passes for 179 yards and two TDs, including a 43-yarder as time expired in the first half.
Duxbury led by scores of 15-0, 22-7 and 29-14. Whitman-Hanson pulled within 29-22 with 9:27 remaining, but the Dragons sandwiched a pair of scoring drives around an interception to clinch the victory.
"Credit to Whitman-Hanson – really tough kids, well-coached," Duxbury coach Matt Landolfi said. "They got us on a couple of wheel actions (when the Panthers had the ball), but our kids stepped up when they needed to, so I'm happy for them."
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"It was a tough game," Walsh said. "We had to battle that one out. That's a great (Whitman-Hanson) team. They were fighting all game. But I think we're in a good spot going into the playoffs right now."
Duxbury, which lost last year's Division 4 state final to Scituate, would seem to be the prohibitive favorite in this year's tournament. Whitman-Hanson (4-4), which won only two games a year ago, will be an underdog in Division 3. The Panthers entered the night as the No. 9 seed, but they are nothing if not battle-tested – their other losses have been to Rockland (5-2), Hingham (6-2) and Marshfield (6-2).
This score was an outlier – Whitman-Hanson had given up more than 13 points only twice over its first seven games – but the never-say-die attitude was typical of the Panthers. They made Duxbury work hard for this win and gave the fans on Senior Night a lot to cheer about, especially in the second half.
"It's just a testament to our seniors," W-H second-year coach Zack Botelho said. "We have 18 of them on the field, plus our team manager, and they don't quit. They play together, they feed off each other, they pick each other up. Their leadership really steers the boat for us."
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"(I'm proud of) just the way we battled the whole game," said senior quarterback Cam Burrows. "Obviously, there were mistakes, mistakes by me, a couple of plays that could have gone our way but didn't. But, yeah, it's hard not to say this was good preparation (for the playoffs) because (Duxbury) is a very, very good team."
Burrows (7-of-20 for 105 yards) had thrown just one TD pass all season coming in, but he had two in this one – a 73-yarder to Trevor Googins late in the first half to cut Duxbury's lead to 15-7 and then a 20-yarder to Will Frazier in the fourth quarter that shaved the deficit to 29-22.
Said Botelho: "Every week we ask him to do different things – sometimes he's a lead blocker, sometimes he's running the ball. Sometimes he's just handing off. Tonight we said, 'Hey, you gotta put it in the air with your arm,' and he rose to the challenge and made the plays when we needed them."
"Our offense has opened up, as most teams do, as the season has gone on," senior fullback/linebacker Evan Casey said. "(Burrows) is a great player. We gave him the opportunities today and hopefully we can build on it going into next week."
Casey came in as both the Panthers' leading rusher (41 carries for 358 yards, 8.7-yard average, 7 TDs) and one of their most impactful defenders. An ankle sprain sapped a lot of his power as he managed just 24 yards on 7 carries, but some lingering discomfort was a small price to play for one last Friday night lights memory on the Whitman-Hanson turf.
"Yeah, definitely (emotional)," he said. "Last time for a lot of our seniors on this field. Everyone played hard. We didn't give up. I couldn't be more proud of this team, how we played tonight. It's a lot to build on going into the first week of the playoffs."
Meanwhile, Duxbury is averaging an absurd 39.4 points per game. Unofficially, Festa is now up to 1,732 passing yards, Barlow has rushed for 622 yards and 10 scores, and Walsh is at 35 catches for 727 yards (20.8-yard average) and 13 TDs. Those video-game numbers forced Botelho to switch to riverboat gambler mode – the Panthers were 7-of-9 on fourth down (that's a lot of risk-taking) and called four trick plays, three of which worked.
"I definitely wanted to have a couple of wrinkles in there this week," the coach said. "We knew we had to score when we touched the ball, by any means necessary. We didn't want to give them the ball back for free. We wanted to take shots and play to win. That was our game plan tonight."
The trick plays included Matt Phelps running 31 yards on a fake punt and Googins (5 carries for 51 yards) completing both his attempts on halfback options. The first one gained 10 yards. The second one was a 33-yard TD strike to Patrick Dolan to cap the opening drive of the second half and slice Duxbury's lead to 22-14.
That drive summed up Whitman-Hanson's fight. The Panthers thought they had momentum going into halftime after Burrows hit a wide-open Googins with a 73-yard TD pass with 47 seconds left in the second quarter to trim Duxbury's lead to 15-7. The Dragons still had time for a reply, though, as a 22-yard gain on a hook-and-lateral play set up one last snap from the W-H 43 with 2 seconds left.
Festa somehow hit Walsh in a crowd in the middle of the end zone for a 22-7 lead.
"That play, you take a shot," Walsh said. "You never know if it's going to work, and it worked. I ran a back-side post. We threw it up and prayed, and we got it."
A punch like that could have deflated Whitman-Hanson for the second half, but the Panthers regrouped and authored a six-play, 63-yard scoring drive to start the third quarter, capped by Googins' option pass to Dolan. Ultimately, the hosts came up short, but there are important games still left to play.
"The kids have bought in (to the idea of) improving every week and (are committed to) playing their best football at the end of the season," Botelho said. "(Tonight) they showed that they can compete with one of the best teams in the state. Once we get into the playoffs next week, they know they can compete. We'll tweak the things we gotta tweak, fix the mistakes we made and be ready to go next Friday."
Ditto for the Dragons, who are aiming for the state title that narrowly eluded them last season.
"Obviously, we went undefeated," Walsh said. "But starting now it's a brand-new season. So we're looking to win the first (playoff) game now. That's the goal."
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Duxbury football tops Whitman-Hanson; both teams now turn playoffs
