Nashua South football goes to 6-0 with win over Dover

DOVER – One of these weeks, Nashua High School South football coach Scott Knight knows his Panthers are going to put together four quarters of good football.

As long as South has a quarter like it did in the third Friday against Dover, it will be all right.

The Panthers scored three touchdowns – all on the legs of quarterback Trevor Knight – to turn a seven-point game into a blowout, as South defeated the Green Wave 42-22 to move to 6-0 on the season.

Knight ran for 212 yards and three scores on just eight carries, with all but 96 of those yards coming in the third quarter, and he was also 8 of 12 for 87 yards and a touchdown. Andrew DeCarteret added 109 yards rushing and two touchdowns on seven carries, as South had 425 of its 515 yards of offense on the ground.

“I told these guys, when they’re on, they’re brilliant,” Scott Knight said. “When they’re off, they can be average. We’ve got to hold them to that brilliance.”

Even when the Panthers weren’t brilliant, they played well enough. South needed just five plays to 66 yards and score on the game’s first drive, but Dover needed just one play to answer.

After a 32-yard kickoff return by Cam Rewucki, the Green Wave successfully pulled off an option pass. Derek Stegman took the snap, turned to his right and threw a lateral to Jack Preister, who found Rewucki racing down the field alone for a 61-yard touchdown pass. A bad snap on the extra point left South ahead 7-6.

Dover forced a punt on South’s next possession and the Green Wave drove down to the Panthers’ 12-yard line. But on fourth down, Stegman’s pass to Rewucki was knocked away, giving South the ball back, and on the next play, Knight picked up 86 yards to the Dover 2. That set up Knight’s 4-yard touchdown pass to Josh Perry.

DeCarteret scored on a 50-yard run on the Panthers’ next possession for a 21-6 halftime lead, but Dover came back with a 15-play drive that got as close as the South 3-yard line. But again, the Green Wave went for it on fourth-and-goal and came up short.

“Then they had that drive (to the 12) and then another that went to the 3 … we could have been tied at halftime,” Scott Knight said. “We were mad at halftime.”

It didn’t get better at the start of the third. Dover made it a seven-point game by taking the opening kickoff of the second half and going 75 yards in five plays. The Green Wave scored on a 49-yard pass from Stegman to Rewucki and the two-point conversion was good to make it 21-14.

South answered in under a minute, as Knight scored on a 76-yard run.

“I saw they had a blitzing linebacker and I thought ‘this is going to be ugly,’ ” Trevor Knight said. “We had a pulling tackle and I was just patient. I faked to the outside and cut inside. We had some good perimeter blocking down field and I was able to make a couple of cuts and there was just green everywhere.”

It was a run that Knight’s coach wasn’t sure how he made.

“We ran a little counter and they blitzed right into,” Scott Knight said. “Somehow he found his way. He makes us look brilliant.”

The Panthers will certainly need Knight to in the next two weeks, as they take on West Conference foes Bishop Guertin and Keene in two games that should determine which two teams will be playing for the conference championship.

“That will be crazy,” Trevor Knight said. “If we take care of business next week … (BG is) going to be tough to beat.”