Nashua South's Brynn Tefft knocks the ball away from Bishop Guertin's Theresa Prunier duirng Monday's Division I contest at Stellos Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Two teams, same direction?

That’s what it looked like going into Monday’s girls lacrosse matchup between Bishop Guertin and Nashua High School South at Stellos Stadium. That is, until the Cards came away with a resounding 14-5 win.

You see, the Cardinals recently had experienced something they hadn’t in years – a three game losing streak. But they’ve appeared to right the ship with their third straight win.

“We’ve done a lot of work on offense, and gone back to some things that worked well for us last year,” BG coach Leslie Why said after her team got eight goals from Tess Prunier. “Some more discipline. We talked about winning the first five minutes of this game because South is not someone you can underestimate with the players they have.”

Yes, Nashua South the other day experienced something it hadn’t in years – a big win over usual Division I contender Pinkerton Academy. They were hoping to take things a step further with good showing on Monday, but that didn’t happen. In an early 1-1 game BG (5-3) rattled off nine straight goals and that was that.

“They need to believe they can compete with teams like that,” South coach Ciki McIntire said, her team now 5-2. “They can, but everybody’s got to be on the same page and play really good lacrosse. … I think there’s always ‘We hope we don’t get killed today.’ That mentality we need to change. Half the kids are thinking we can compete, and half are hoping we don’t get killed.”

Guertin scored 40 seconds in but South evened it up quickly. And then the Cardinals just took control and seemed to score at will, taking a 10-2 lead into the break.

“We really came out hot and took care of things early on,” Why said. “It’s a big run. And they did a nice job of staying in it and doing what we had we had been practicing both defensively, offensively and draw wise.

“Coming out of (their game vs.) Moses Brown where we had to have those pieces working, we were able to carry it over.”

Three goals in less than a minute got the Cards on their way. Ari Kouchalakos put BG in front for good nearly three minutes in, and Prunier and Lauren Redfern followed.

South, which got its first goal from Ella Benzekri 1:03 in, didn’t score again until Karina O’Donnell found the back of the net with 2:58 left in the half. In between there were a lot of BG cutter plays and give-and-goes, and not many Panther possessions thanks to turnovers, etc.

“We would get possession and we just wouldn’t value it,” McIntire said.

Benzekri finished with a hat trick while single goals went to Karina O’Donnell and Morgan Udzanovich with Maren Lowell and Maddy Matylewski getting assists. It might have been even worse for South had it not been for Keira Walsh’s five saves.

Why says sophomore goaltender Maddie Eder-Linell (three saves yesterday), seeing her first full-fledged varsity action this spring, has improved a lot since the loss to Portsmouth that started the slide. “She’s making the key saves,” Why said.

And freshman Abby Lynn has also played well with a goal yesterday. Kam Schmitt, Anna Campel and Kyra O’Connell were BG’s other scorers. Guertin needs to use its depth to have improvement by June.

“We’ve been using more people at midfield, more people on offense,” Why said.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the drawing board for South, which has Windham today and then its big rivalry game with Nashua North on Thursday.

“My expectations were that we would show up and compete,” McIntire said. “We want to compete a little bit more.”

And get that direction back again.