South quarterback Karsten Lemire gets chased by Windham's Mason Ketelaar while Panther Antonio Martinez looks on during Saturday's game at steamy Stellos Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA — Scott Knight had a bad feeling the way things were going during the week for his Nashua High School South football team.

On Saturday, the Panthers head coach’s fears were realized.

South turned the ball over four times, and had a bad snap on a punt attempt, helping Windham to a 44-13 win in the sweltering heat at Stellos Stadium.

“We were not ready to play,” Knight said, his team now out of the gate at 0-2 and visiting a tough Merrimack team this Friday. “What that was, I don’t know. There wasn’t a great vibe, we didn’t have a great week of practice. … We turned the ball over multiple times. You can’t do that.”

The Jaguars got their first win of the season after nearly upsetting Pinkerton in their opener. They took advantage of two Panther turnovers and the special teams mistake, and led 21-0 after the first 12 minutes and were up 41-6 at the half, meaning the second half would be in running time.

What would Jags coach Jack Byrne have said if someone told him he’d be up enough to create running time over South on the road?

“I would have said you were crazy,” Byrne said. “Couple mistakes on their part we were able to capitalize on, and that’s huge. It’s not just the mistake, you’ve got to use it and do something with it.

“We had to grind for everything. … I was really glad our players could get it done today.”

The Panthers survived their first fumble with a Jags three-and-out, but QB Karsten Lemire was picked off by Windham’s Matt Desmarais, who returned it to the South 3 to set up a 5-yard TD run wide by Brandon Beland to help make it 7-0 with 7:08 left in the first.

The bad punt snap set Windham up at the South 17, and six plays later Tiger An scored the first of his two TDs on a 2-yard run. Liam Burke’s PAT made it 14-0. To make things worse, South fumbled the ensuing kickoff to give Windham the ball on the Panther 26. Six plays later it was An again, 21-zip.

The Jags put up 20 in the second quarter without the benefit of turnovers, first on a Jake Micciche 37-yard TD run, but that was answered with a nice 13-play, 69-yard drive with Panther Kyle Emmons running it in from 5 yards to make it 28-6.

Windham’s response? Three plays later QB Josh Sweeney hit Micciche for a 44-yard TD and the Jags were in command, 35-6 with 4:34 left in the half. They added a 12 yard TD run by David Croteau late in the half to create running time for the entire second half. Amazing.

“Once they got going, they were hitting us with outside veer and we couldn’t get off blocks on the perimeter,” Knight said. “Then they got into some unbalanced (lines), we got outflanked a few times, and we got beat with that pass. You know, it’s not like we didn’t show this stuff. …We play like this, it’s going to be tough to win games. … They were playing full speed, and we were at half to three-quarters.

“It was just a tough day all around for everybody.”