Titans turn tables on Panthers, advance to title game

When the football teams from Nashua’s two public high schools met during the regular season, it was Nashua South that piled up the yardage and the points.

Nashua North did its best to make sure those roles were reversed on Saturday. Now the Titans will have another chance to get the program’s first championship.

North put up over 500 yards of offense and stepped up on defense when it had to, as the No. 2 Titans defeated the No. 3 Panthers 49-35 in the Division I semifinals at Stellos Stadium.

North’s Andre Williams rushed for 279 yards on 30 carries and scored five touchdowns, four in the second half, and Brandon Karkhanis threw for another 216 yards and a touchdown. As a team, North piled up 563 yards of offense as it found a way to answer every time South scored a touchdown in the second half.

Although North’s defense gave up 359 yards, including 267 in the second half, the biggest play for the Titans (7-4 overall) might have come on the defensive side of the ball.

After holding South (6-5 overall) to just seven points in the first half to lead 20-7, North couldn’t find a way to slow down the Panthers in the second.

With the Titans up 42-28 in the fourth quarter, South drove down to North’s 16-yard line. On second-and-5, quarterback Keith Farkas found Nilsson Basora open in the end zone for a touchdown that would have made it a one-score game again.

But South was called for an ineligible man downfield and eventually wound up with a fourth-and-1 play at North’s 12. On that play, Armond McRae was stopped for no gain, turning the ball over to North on downs with 6:07 left in the game.

“That was a gigantic play,” North coach Jason Robie said. “We needed to validate what we’ve been doing all year. People have been second-guessing a lot of the things we’ve done from a schematic standpoint because we gave up a lot of points. We executed. We were able to do some good things out there defensively.”

North also got a big defensive play early to set up a touchdown, when Anton Marinchik intercepted a pass by Farkas and returned it to South’s 21-yard line, setting up a touchdown run by Jamhar Gathright that made it a 14-0 game with 7:01 left in the first quarter.

“We got off to a rough start,” South coach Scott Knight said. “I don’t know why we were tight. We had some stops in the first half, we just couldn’t get into a rhythm (offensively). Second half, we come out on fire.”

Farkas was 0-for-8 in the first half, including the interception, and South gained just 92 yards on the ground through the first 24 minutes. But in the second half, Farkas completed 10 of 13 for 146 yards with touchdowns to Bisora and Brandon Gauthier.

Derek Paradis, who rushed for 110 yards and had three touchdowns, opened the third quarter with an 87-yard kickoff return for South to make it a 20-14 game.

But North answered that score with a 12-play, 80-yard drive that took four minutes off the clock and ended on a 4-yard run by Williams. Karkhanis hit Cam Duval for the two-point conversion to increase the Titans’ lead back to two scores.

“That’s the difference – we were able to answer,” Robie said. “The kids came after that kickoff return and said ‘we’ve got this.’ We go right down the field and score. Answering that was probably the next biggest thing after that stop (on fourth down).”

North’s offense also came up with the big play on fourth down, as Karkhanis twice found Marinchik on fourth down to keep a scoring drive alive in the second half. Marinchik finished with five catches for 113 yards for the Titans.

After South scored to make it 42-35, North faced a third-and-4 from its own 46-yard line when the Panthers called a timeout with 1:53 left in the game. The Titans came out and gave the ball to Williams once again, and he responded with a 54-yard touchdown run that finished off the North win.

“Andre is a very good football player,” Robie said. “Fortunately, he has a very good line blocking in front of him as well. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. You can’t focus on only him. He ran very hard today.”

The Titans return to the Division I final for the second straight year, but this time they’ll be heading to Derry looking for the program’s first title. No. 1 Pinkerton defeated No. 4 Salem, 21-14, in the other semifinal and will host the championship game for the second time in three years on Nov. 20 at noon.

South’s season isn’t over yet, as the Panthers will get another shot at the Titans on Thanksgiving Day.

“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster ride,” Knight said of this year. “It feels like it just started. I feel bad for our seniors. But they got to be champs as sophomores. I wish they could have gone further. Our juniors are chomping at the bit, though.”