Windham had good start, poor finish

It was almost like it was 2009 again in Willimantic on Friday night.
That was when Tim Doyle fielded Steve Calitri's opening kickoff near his own goal line and found his way up field for a season-opening 99-yard kick off return that spurred the Windham Whippets on to a win over Norwich Free Academy.
On Friday night, after the kick off and a four-yard run by Shane Doughty, it was Alex Partosan who played the option to perfection and then kept the ball, turned it upfield, and went the 75 yards to give Windham the early eight-point advantage.
"It felt familiar to last year at the beginning of the game," Windham coach Brian Crudden said.
Anthony Facchini felt the same way and on the Norwich sideline, that was not a good feeling to have.
"That was letdown and it was like, here we go again," the NFA running back said. "But I know that we're not last year's team, we're a lot better than that. We've worked so hard in the offseason and preseason that I knew it wasn't going down like that, not like last year."
The Wildcats did answer the touchdown later in the first quarter, but then allowed Windham to score again right before the half. The Whippets put together 231 yards of offense in the first half and held on to the ball for 15 minutes, 48 seconds of the 24-minute half.
Still, NFA coach Jemal Davis wasn't overly concerned.
"They got the coin toss, got the ball and they were able to stop us early," Davis said. "It's tough any time you come up to Windham, especially for the first game of the season, Brian just does an excellent job of preparing his kids and giving you stuff that you can't prepare for."
The turn in fortunes came early in the second half when Windham, thanks to a penalty for coming out of the locker room late and a misunderstood call on the kick, gave NFA the ball on the Whippets 40-yard line. Facchini scored to make it a two-point game and, after a windham turnover, the Wildcats scored again to take the lead for good.
Facchini, who only had 60 yards in eight carries in the first half, finished with 199 yards in 23 carries.
"We obviously know that Anthony is an exceptional athlete, a big, physical kid and he's got some big guys up front, and with that combination, we felt that if we just don't turn the ball over, get some stops, we can control the tempo of the game and run the clock out," Davis said.
NFA won, 25-14.


Notes:

The running game may be old news in the NFL, but not in high school ball. Windham passed the ball seven times Friday night, the Wildcats only five. The longest pass completion of the night was by Windham's Alex Partosan for nine yards. The only completion for NFA's Erik Washburn was good for only a yard.

Penalties and turnovers haunted Windham.
The Whippets were flagged 10 times for 95 yards, the worst being a holding call that negated a 38-yard touchdown run by Shane Doughty in the first quarter that could have put the Wildcats in a big hole early.
Windham also turned over the ball four times, two on fumbles, two on interceptions.
"From the staff on down to kids, we were disorganized and undisciplined, that's disappointing," Windham coach Brian Crudden said.

It's never easy picking winners in the first week of the season and I struggled on Friday night's games. The East Lyme/Torrington game I considered a toss-up so I went with the local folks and Torrington bit me on that one. There was no question that Stonington versus Waterford could go either way as well and that came down to a flip of the coin. I went out on the limb to pick Capital Prep/Hartford Classical over Griswold, the charter school teams have an assosrtment of athletes that changes on a yearly basis and you really don't know what they have before they play. At least, I got the NFA and Ledyard picks right and wasn't far off on either. I said 42-7 Ledyard, the Colonels won 43-7 and I picked NFA to win 24-13, not far from the actual final of 25-14.
I have Fitch, Bacon, New London, Lowell Catholic and Wolcott winning today.