Sophomore Ahliy Cantave and 7-2 Durfee host BC High Friday in their last home game before Fenway

FALL RIVER Ahliy Cantave passed 1,000 rushing yards in his first varsity season, and on Friday night the Durfee sophomore carries the Hilltoppers into their last home game of the fall, against BC High.

Durfee (7-2) plays the Eagles (2-7) at 6 p.m. at Durfee High School Stadium in a nonleague game, according to both teams' schedules. Neither team is in the MIAA tournament, because in the association's final Division 1 power rankings, posted Nov. 1, Durfee finished outside the top 16 and BC High had too few wins.

For Durfee, Friday is the last step before Wednesday, Nov. 25, when the Hilltoppers play New Bedford at Fenway Park, by Durfee's Arbiter Live schedule. Durfee and New Bedford are both 1-0 in the Big Three on MaxPreps, each with a win over Brockton, so the Thanksgiving game at Fenway decides the conference. Durfee has won three straight and is 5-0 at home.

Cantave's first varsity season

Cantave ran for 1,032 yards and nine touchdowns on 150 carries in Durfee's first eight games, 6.9 yards a carry, with seven games of 100 yards or more, according to the team's MaxPreps statistics. He went past 1,000 against Brockton on Oct. 30, on the fourth-quarter drive he finished with the touchdown run that made it 21-0. At Newton North on Nov. 6 he added 117 yards on 20 carries and four touchdowns, according to the scoring summary and statistics Durfee coach Taylor Brown sent South Coast 360. That puts him at 1,149 yards and 13 rushing touchdowns in nine games, by our math.

With the game tied 28-28 in the fourth quarter at Dickinson Stadium, Cantave ran 6 yards for the touchdown that won it, 34-28. He had already scored on runs of 3, 3 and 21 yards in a first quarter that ended with Durfee ahead 28-7, against a Newton North team that was 7-1 at the cutoff and two spots ahead of Durfee in the MIAA's final Division 1 rankings.

Sherry, Gondre and the passing game

Senior quarterback Matt Sherry, No. 2, completed 50 of 100 passes for 721 yards and seven touchdowns, with one interception, over the first eight games, MaxPreps shows. In those games he also ran for 130 yards and three touchdowns, and he is Durfee's kicker, 20 of 23 on extra points and three of four on field goals with a long of 25 yards before he made four more extra points at Newton North.

Junior James Gondre, No. 18, is the deep threat. He caught six of Sherry's seven touchdown passes in his five games through Oct. 30, with 12 catches for 253 yards, 21.1 yards a catch. Two of those scores came against Brockton: a 47-yard strike in the second quarter, when Gondre was wide open behind the defense, and a throw into the end zone on third and 12 after Sherry scrambled away from pressure, which made it 14-0 with 7:58 left in the fourth quarter.

Senior Landyn Nogueira, No. 11, has 12 catches for 246 yards and a touchdown, by our math, with a long of 45, and he caught Durfee's only completion at Newton North, a 32-yarder. Junior Moziah Cousins, No. 7, leads the team with 19 catches for 180 yards, ran for three touchdowns of his own in the first eight games, and opened the scoring at Newton North with a 5-yard run, one of his nine carries for 83 yards that night.

A defense that takes the ball away

Durfee has allowed 21 points or fewer in seven of its nine games and held Attleboro, Somerset Berkley, Braintree, Dartmouth and Brockton to nine points or fewer, the scores on its schedules show. Against Brockton, senior defensive end Carter Morel, No. 51, spent the night in the Boxers' backfield, with three sacks by The Boston Globe's count, one of them in the first half and the last with 2:19 to play, and Durfee stopped Brockton on fourth down four times in the second half before the Boxers scored with 14 seconds left.

At Newton North the Hilltoppers did not turn the ball over and took it away four times, on two fumble recoveries and interceptions by senior Zatayvian Rodrigues, No. 1, and junior Nelson Caraballo, No. 15, Brown's statistics show. Caraballo is also Durfee's kick returner, with 180 yards on five returns through Oct. 30, an average of 36 yards, and a touchdown on a kickoff return, according to MaxPreps.

Why neither team is in the tournament

Only the top 16 teams in each division's power rankings with at least three wins qualify for the MIAA tournament, by the association's 2026 football format and its final rankings, and the ratings add each team's average margin, capped at 14 points a game, to the strength of its opponents. Durfee finished 21st in Division 1 at 6-2. Its average margin of 7.1 points was the sixth best in the division, but its opponents' rating of minus 0.28 was the second lowest of the 33 teams, according to the MIAA's final rankings.

BC High missed for the opposite reason: its opponents' rating of 17.67 was the second highest in Division 1, behind only Central Catholic's, a schedule that lifted the Eagles to 16th, but at 1-7 at the Oct. 31 cutoff they were short of the three-win minimum. Methuen, 17th, was 2-6, so the No. 16 seed went to Weymouth, 18th at 5-3, the MIAA bracket shows.

BC High: a hard road and a staff with NFL experience

Five of BC High's seven losses came against teams in the Division 1 tournament field, by the MIAA bracket: top seed St. John's Prep (43-6), No. 2 Saint John's (35-0), No. 3 Central Catholic (34-0), No. 6 Xaverian Brothers (47-6) and No. 14 Everett, which won 22-19. The Eagles also lost to La Salle Academy of Rhode Island and to Bishop Feehan, the No. 8 seed in Division 2, according to their MaxPreps schedule.

The Eagles have won two of their last four, 22-10 at Malden Catholic on Oct. 16 and 15-0 over Attleboro on Nov. 6. Attleboro is the one opponent the two teams share: Durfee beat the Bombardiers 12-9 at home on Sept. 11 to open its season.

Paul Zukauskas, a 1997 BC High graduate, has been head coach since March 2024, the school announced then. He was a four-year starter on Boston College's offensive line, a 2001 draft pick of the Cleveland Browns who played five NFL seasons with the Browns and the San Francisco 49ers, and the head coach at Lawrence Academy from 2011 to 2017, where his teams went 44-13. This season BC High added former Patriots captain Matthew Slater as assistant head coach for leadership and player development, the school announced on Aug. 4.

BC High's MaxPreps roster, last updated Oct. 27, lists 28 players, including four quarterbacks: senior William Polis, junior Brandon Eddings and sophomores Francesco Fautz and Danny McGarry.

Durfee and BC High, side by side (records and scores from the teams' MaxPreps schedules, which list Durfee's Oct. 23 win at TechBoston as 35-13, where Durfee's Arbiter Live page has 34-7; rankings from the MIAA's final Division 1 power rankings, Nov. 1)

	Durfee	BC High
Record	7-2	2-7
League	1-0, Big Three	1-3, Catholic Conference
Home and road	5-0 at home, 2-2 away	1-4 at home, 1-3 away
Points scored	208 (23.1 a game)	82 (9.1 a game)
Points allowed	128 (14.2 a game)	259 (28.8 a game)
Streak	Won three	Won one
MIAA Division 1 rank at the cutoff	21st (6-2)	16th (1-7)
Opponents' rating	-0.28, second lowest in Division 1	17.67, second highest in Division 1
Against Attleboro	Won 12-9, Sept. 11	Won 15-0, Nov. 6
Head coach	Taylor Brown	Paul Zukauskas
Thanksgiving week	New Bedford at Fenway Park, Wed. Nov. 25, 4 p.m.	At Catholic Memorial, Thu. Nov. 26, 10 a.m.

What to watch

Durfee ran the ball 275 times against 102 passes in its first eight games, with Cantave, Sherry and Cousins all scoring rushing touchdowns, and in our read that ground game is what frees Gondre deep. BC High's defense allowed 10 points combined in its two wins, so a fast start matters, the way it did at Newton North, where Durfee scored all 28 of its first-half points in the first quarter. A win would make the Hilltoppers 8-2, three more wins than all of last season, when they finished 5-6, and would finish their home schedule unbeaten.

The road to Fenway

Durfee won last year's Thanksgiving game against New Bedford 36-0, its MaxPreps record shows. This year's meeting moves to Fenway Park on Wednesday, Nov. 25, at 4 p.m. New Bedford is 7-2, with a 20-14 win at Brockton on Oct. 24 that left the Whalers 1-0 in the conference, and its season in the Division 1 tournament ended in a 47-0 loss at Springfield Central on Nov. 6, according to its MaxPreps schedule.

Brown was a senior quarterback on the 2000 Durfee team that tied Brockton 15-15 and shared the Big Three title, the last Hilltoppers team to win a share of it, The Boston Globe reported. "Putting a banner in the school will be our rallying cry," Brown told the paper.

Kickoff and tickets

Kickoff is 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, at Durfee High School Stadium on Elsbree Street, according to Durfee's Arbiter Live schedule and the GoFan listing for the game. GoFan lists tickets at $6 for adults, $4 for senior citizens and $3 or $4 for students, and the same prices for box office sale.

FRED-TV Sports streamed Durfee's last home game, against Brockton, live on its Facebook page and posted it to its YouTube channel. South Coast 360 has asked Coach Brown for his view of the matchup, and his answer will be added here when it comes in. The final will be on our Friday Night Scoreboard after the game.

Our game stories: Durfee 34, Newton North 28: Ahliy Cantave runs for four touchdowns and Durfee beats Brockton 21-8. Every South Coast final is on the Friday Night Scoreboard.

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