ESPN

NORTH EASTON, Mass. -– Oliver Ames sent 10 hitters to the plate and scored six runs in the second inning against Franklin starter Brendon Kuzio, on the way to a 9-5 victory over the Panthers on Wednesday afternoon at Frothingham Park in Easton.

Andrew Mancini sparked the Tigers offense with three hits and three RBI, while Dave MacKinnon struck out six over five-plus innings in his first start of the season. The win improved the Oliver Ames record to 9-1 this year (all of them league games), a mark that head coach Leo Duggan, in his 27th season at the helm, was not expecting.

“If you had told me at the beginning of the year that we’d be 9-1...I don’t know...It’s great,” said Duggan. “The kids are great and they work hard.”

OA grabbed a lead in the second inning that it would not relinquish. After a leadoff walk, Brandon Gagliardi drove in Greg Cummings with a double to center. Mike Ferreira followed with an RBI single to make it 2-0. After a MacKinnon base hit, Mike McMillan drove in the third run. Andrew Mancini, the senior catcher, broke the game open with a triple to left-centerfield that scored two runs and made it 5-0.

The Tigers added one more on a double steal in the second and then tacked on a seventh run in the third on a MacKinnon sacrifice fly to right. Duggan called it the best offensive inning of the season for the Oliver Ames.

He added, “We’re usually behind people. Today was the first time that we’ve been out in front all year. We usually wait until the bottom of the fifth to start doing well. They had good swing, which we’ve been trying to stress.”

MacKinnon, who had struck out 14 of the 15 hitters he had faced in five previous relief appearances, was dominant early in the game. He struck out the side in the first inning on nine pitches, but as he got into the fifth inning he was clearly tiring and the Panthers (7-3, 6-3) started to take advantage.

Chris Roche led off the inning with a single down the leftfield line, which was followed by a base hit to center by Drew Inglesi. Catcher Stephen Shea stepped up with a run-scoring double to right center to make it 7-1 and Inglesi would come home on a wild pitch. With runners at second and third and no outs, MacKinnon was able to bear down and get the middle of the order on strikeout, a weak grounder to third, and a pop-up to the catcher.

Franklin head coach Dave Niro called that an important turning point in the game.

“We never give up, but the last couple of game we just haven’t gotten the big hit,” he noted. “We had second and third and the two, three, and four hitters coming up and got nothing out of it. We could have been right back in it.”

Despite not getting runs out of the situation, the Panthers were energized by getting on the board and in the top of the sixth went right back to work.

Andrew Dean, who replaced Neal Hart in leftfield in the fourth inning, smashed a leadoff triple to straightaway center that would have been a homerun on just about any field with a fence. Bryan Abbott, who moved from first to the mound, singled Dean home and Roche drew a walk that chased Mackinnon from the game.

“David’s the best player in the Hockomock, I don’t care what anyone says,” said Duggan. “He just got a little tired and they came back. Give Franklin credit. Most teams would have folded, but they came back.”

Brendan Welch came in to pitch and retired the next two hitters, but Santucci doubled over the head of the leftfielder to score both Abott and Roche. Both runs were charged to MacKinnon. Welch struck out pinch hitter Pat O’Reilly, but Franklin were back in the game at 7-5.

That would not last long.

MacKinnon reached on an error to start the bottom of the sixth. Two batters later, Mancini ripped a grounder down the first base line that was ruled to have just gone over the bag and made it 8-5. A wild pitch moved him to third. On a swinging third strike, Franklin’s catcher Shea thought it may have bounced and started up the first base line with the ball. It left home open and Mancini took advantage to score another insurance run.

“Physical mistakes we can handle but mental ones we can’t,” said Niro. “You know, a catcher vacating home plate, a little pop-up that we missed, a double-play ball and no one covers second base, it’s little things like that.”

Duggan was thrilled with the win and gave credit to his opponents for making it a tough game after a tough start.

“That’s still a good team; anytime you beat Franklin it’s great,” he explained. “I think the kids hit the ball pretty well today and we played pretty well. It was great that we got two runs in the bottom of the sixth. We knew we had it after that.”

FRANKLIN, Mass. -- Brandon Gagliardi’s job all game long was to keep tabs on dangerous Pembroke running back Jon Hooper, so when he saw the Titans senior flare out from the backfield deep in Oliver Ames territory, Gagliardi simply followed his instincts.

The junior stepped in front of the Luke Nagle pass intended for Hooper and went 88 yards the other way for a game-sealing touchdown as his Tigers took a 20-12 decision away from Pembroke in the Div. 3 semifinals at Pisini Field.

Oliver Ames (7-4), making its first postseason appearance in school history, will take on Concord-Carlisle in the Div. 3 Super Bowl this Saturday (9 a.m.) at Gillette Stadium.

“They had me spying their running back and I carried him out to the flat and saw the ball was coming toward me,” Gagliardi said. “I jumped it and once I got past him there was no one there to catch me. The eyes light up and you just try keep running.”

“It feels fantastic,” he continued. “We’ve been working for so long. A lot of these kids have been working since the eighth grade and we always set this as a goal and to finally achieve it is just fantastic.”

It was an earlier big play that had Oliver Ames in that position in the first place. The Titans (10-1) had just taken a 12-6 lead following a 48-yard touchdown run by Hooper (105 yards on 14 carries) with 34 seconds left in the third quarter.

Enter Carlton Williamson. The speedy junior took the ensuing kickoff 88 yards to paydirt, and Ryan McGrath’s extra point gave the Tigers their first lead of the game at 13-12.

“I told the kids if you ever need an example to say that’s every facet of the game working for you, that was it,” exclaimed OA coach Jim Artz afterward. “We have a great drive to start the second half, made some adjustments that we needed to go and we go up and made the game 6-6. Then, we feel good and we give up a quick score and no sooner do we do that then Carlton [Williamson] ... I don’t know teams kick him the ball but they do ... he takes another one to the house. Now we’ve got to play with the lead. Then the defense seals the game for us with a pick-6.”

Lost in the shuffle of the Tigers victory was the tough, hard-nosed running of 5-10, 185-pound Sam Langston. Langston went toe to toe with the Titans impressive line and came with 83 tough yards and a touchdown on 21 carries.

Pembroke’s Tom Castanha scored the game’s first touchdown, powering his way in from the 2 to cap a nice drive that featured a pair of big completions by Nagle (189 yards). The Titans carried that slim 6-0 advantage into halftime, but Oliver Ames came out of the locker room looking like a different team.

The Tigers forced a Pembroke punt right off the bat, then 90 yards on an 18-play drive that was aided by 29 yards of Pembroke penalties. Langston got the call from the Titans two-yard line and seemingly pushed the entire pile into the end zone for the tying score.

“I have to thank my big fullbacks Dean [Soucie] and Brian [Rezendes]. They got the big push in there and I just had to get my arms in and that was it,” Langston said of the touchdown. "They were a good defense, I have to give threm thast. It was tough and we had a few adjustments we had to make in the beginning but in the end we figured out what we needed to do.”

For Artz, it was all about keeping his team poised despite being unfamiliar with the postseason stage.

“We’ve got a young staff and kids who haven’t played in a game this big before,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I’m the raving lunatic on the sideline and tonight I was the only voice of reason and calm and everyone else was losing their heads. I said ‘Guys, its a 6-0 game, we played pretty badly and its 6-0. If we come out and do the things we’re capable of, we’ll win this game. So lets calm down, coaches included, and we’ll be fine.' We could have panicked but we didn’t.”

PEMBROKE 20, OLIVER AMES 12
Oliver Ames (7-4) 0 0 13 7 - 20
Pembroke (10-1) 0 6 6 0 - 12

PE - Tom Castanha 2 run (kick failed)
OA - Sam Langston 2 run (kick blocked)
PE - Jon Hooper 48 run (pass failed)
OA - Carlton Williamson 82 kick return (Ryan McGrath kick)
OA - Brandon Gagliardi 88 interception return (McGrath kick)