Final: Abington 36, Case 7, as three first-quarter takeaways stop the Cardinals one round after Fairhaven

SWANSEA Joseph Case's third offensive play of the night ended in Jack Reilly's hands at the Case 25, and by the time the first quarter was over, Abington had scored on its opening drive, turned that interception and a fumble on the next kickoff into two more touchdowns, and built a 22-0 lead that the Cardinals never got close to.

No. 3 Abington beat No. 11 Case 36-7 in the Division 6 Round of 8 on Thursday night, Nov. 12, at Memorial Field, ending Case's season one round after its first playoff win since 1992. The Cardinals, a week removed from that 42-37 upset of unbeaten Fairhaven, finish 7-3 in coach Mike Cloutier's first season. Abington (8-2) moves on to a state semifinal against Old Rochester, which beat No. 2 Hudson 22-21 in overtime at the same hour.

Reilly, the Green Wave's senior quarterback, did it on both sides of the ball. He scored twice on 1-yard runs in the first quarter, ran in a two-point conversion in the third and made the interception from his safety spot, and senior Nazir Paulding ran for touchdowns of 2 and 5 yards behind a line that pushed the Cardinals backward most of the night. By the broadcast's unofficial count, Abington outgained Case 208 yards to 41 in the first half.

Twenty-two points in a quarter

Case won the toss and deferred, and Abington opened with a 59-yard drive that took 4 minutes and 55 seconds. Paulding and Brendan Ward ran behind senior Matthew Pifer and the Green Wave's right side, and on fourth and goal from the 1, Reilly dove in with 7:05 left in the quarter. A Case penalty on the extra point moved the ball half the distance, and Abington ran in two points instead for an 8-0 lead.

Case's first series started at its own 12 after a block-in-the-back penalty on the kickoff return. On third and long from the 8, Aedan Borges rolled to his right under pressure and threw back across the field, and Reilly stepped in front of it, the first of three Case turnovers in the quarter. Paulding broke a run to the 11 on the next play, and two plays later he scored from 2 yards out with 5:24 left. On the kickoff that followed, Case lost the ball on the return near its 20, and Abington needed five plays, the last a Reilly sneak, to make it 22-0 with 2:39 still on the first-quarter clock.

Troy Medas kept that drive going longer than Abington wanted. The junior defensive end, No. 34, stopped Ward on the six-inch line with a touchdown-saving tackle on second and goal before the sneak. With seconds left in the quarter, Case went for it on fourth down near the Abington 30, and Abington's No. 8 took the ball out of a Case receiver's hands for the third takeaway. Midway through the second quarter, Medas dropped an Abington ball carrier for a loss on first and goal from the 3, and Paulding scored on the next play, a 5-yard cutback, to make it 28-0 with 5:55 left in the half.

Borges answers before the half

Borges, a senior, started the season at running back, moved to quarterback in Case's second game and does all of the team's kicking, and he spent most of the first half under pressure from an Abington front that put center Brady Augusta and Pifer in the backfield. Facing fourth and 22 from midfield with about a minute left in the half, he stood in against a four-man rush and hit a receiver down the middle at the 14, and after a roughing-the-passer call put the ball inside the 1, he sprinted for the left pylon and scored with 31 seconds left, and his extra point made it 28-7 at halftime. A week earlier he had scored all six Case touchdowns in the 42-37 win at Fairhaven, The Boston Globe reported.

Senior receiver Matt Bogdan gave Case its best gain of the second half, getting behind the Abington secondary for a catch of about 30 yards to the Green Wave 35 on the opening drive, and senior tight end Cooper Bert, a captain, laid out for a deep ball late in the first half that came loose when he hit the ground. Junior Anderson Emard returned kicks all night and brought one back from the 18 to the 31 in the second quarter.

The second half

In a rain that started at halftime, the Cardinals' first drive of the third quarter ended on a fourth-and-7 incompletion at the Abington 32, and Abington answered with a 68-yard march that ended in a 3-yard touchdown run, followed by Reilly's two-point run for a 36-7 lead late in the third quarter. Case got the ball back three more times on Abington mistakes: an onside kick that bounced to the Cardinals at midfield, a fumble Case recovered at the Abington 29 with 7:51 left and another in the Abington backfield that Case returned to the Green Wave 14 with just over five minutes left. An Abington interception, a sack of about 10 yards by Augusta and a fourth-down pass broken up at the 14 ended those chances.

Abington finished with five takeaways, three interceptions, the kickoff fumble and a muffed punt it recovered in the last two minutes, and two of the interceptions belonged to the same player, Abington's No. 8, a receiver who also plays in the secondary. Abington coach Ed Reilly, in his third season, runs the Wing T, and the Green Wave leaned on the run all night.

Scoring plays (our reporting from the game)

Quarter	Team	Play	Time left
First	Abington	Jack Reilly 1 run (two-point run good)	7:05
First	Abington	Nazir Paulding 2 run (kick good)	5:24
First	Abington	Reilly 1 run (kick good)	2:39
Second	Abington	Paulding 5 run (kick no good)	5:55
Second	Case	Aedan Borges 1 run (Borges kick)	0:31
Third	Abington	No. 10, 3 run (Reilly two-point run)	about 3:20

From under 20 players to 51

Case came into Thursday 7-2, second in the South Coast Gold, after losing only to Diman in the opener and at Fairhaven in October. Cloutier wrote before the game that the program ended last season "with under 20 kids," and that 51 signed up this fall. "I could not be more proud of this team and how far and how fast they have turned this around," he wrote in that email to South Coast 360, hours before kickoff. "The future is bright here. These kids are the cornerstones."

What comes next

Abington plays Old Rochester in a Division 6 semifinal at a neutral site; the MIAA's bracket had not posted a date, time or site Thursday night. Semifinal tickets cost $13.60 on the MIAA price list. Both of Thursday's teams still play on Thanksgiving morning, Thursday, Nov. 26, at 10 a.m.: Case at Somerset Berkley and Whitman-Hanson at Abington's Memorial Field.

Our preview: Case takes its upset of Fairhaven to No. 3 Abington, and the game before it: Case ends unbeaten Fairhaven's title defense, 42-37. Every South Coast final is on the Friday Night Scoreboard.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.