Bishop Gueritn players celebrate their 20-14 win over B.C.High on Sunday, as the Eagles' Donovan Babka heads to the sidelines at Stellos Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Bishop Guertin High School boys lacrosse coach Chris Cameron looked over at a familiar face Sunday on the Motta Field sideline at Stellos Stadium while joining the postgame handshake line Sunday and had a huge grin.

“This,” he said, “is what we’ve been looking for.”

And that was a big win against great competiton, a complete game, if you will. Or at least a complete fourth quarter, which the Cardinals executed in a stunning 20-14 comeback win over Boston College High, which was ranked by some as the No. 14 team in the country coming in with a mark of 15-1.

Guertin got four goals each from its Connors, Bouvier and Guibord, but more importantly blanked the visitors 6-0 in the final period in the battle of the top ranked teams in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Guertin’s Tim Kiely, who scored three of those six fourth quarter goals, knew exactly what his coach was talking about.

“Throughout this year we’ve had a lot of runs when we can put goals together, keep on coming,” the senior said. “But we’ve run into trouble completing that full game. But I feel like today, other than the first quarter, it was a complete game, no mistakes.

“We just kept believing we could come back. The thing about this team is we won’t give up. Whatever lead we get down by, we’re coming back, no matter what.”

The Eagles, who got an amazing seven goals from Tufts-bound Will Emsing, found that out, as they stormed out to an early 6-2 lead and looked like they would run away and hide. Guertin fought back to tie the score at 6, only to fall behind again and went into the half trailing 11-8.

Guertin battled back again, tying the score at 11 with a three-goal run (two by Aiden Laurendeau and one by Guibord), the Eagles went back up 13-11, then Guertin again tied it at 13 and it was tied again at 14 as Guibord scored late in the third period. Who knew that would be the first of a game-ending 7-0 run?

“All year I’ve been telling these kids how close they are to being great,” Cameron said. “These guys, they’re ready to come out and play, but they needed to relax. But once we got confidence and started believing in ourselves, it was just a train.

“We won faceoffs, make saves. We’ve been able to score on anybody all year. We were able to make saves and clear the ball. Once we put that together, the unforced turnovers, we put them aside.”

“We just didn’t have enough possessions, they got hot at the face(off),” Eagles coach Marcus Craigwell said. “We just tried to make some plays defensively and get the ball out of our end, but they kept the pressure and they kept winning faceoffs. That was tough.

“It could have went either way. We were hot in the first half, they were hotter in the second half, and they finished the game.”

Guertin didn’t win the majority of the faceoffs, but Paulo Vazquez and Noah Zeman did when it counted – the fourth quarter. Besides the offense, the Cards got two big defensive contributions. Cameron had goalies split halves all year, but Sunday he had a feeling that Will Murphy was in his comfort zone, so he stuck with him the entire game and he responded with 10 saves. Second, All-American defenseman Colin Roark bounced back from a tough first half to hold Emsing to one goal the rest of the way.

“Will Murphy wasn’t great in the first half, but you could see he was seeing the ball,” Cameron said. “And then he made some huge saves for us. Sometimes you have to make a call.

“And Colin Roark, he’s the best defenseman in the state, and he was revved up for Emsing, but a little too much worked up. We just said ‘Settle down, you’re going to play the best second half you’ve ever played in your life. That’s not easy to do. When things are going bad, it’s tough to turn it around – and he turned it around.”

Offensively, Guertin also got three goals from Brady Dumont, two each by Caleb Yeung and Laurendeau, and a single tally by Jack Carron.

Guertin had lost to Staples of Connecticut by one, then Archbishop Stepinac by three, and then came a tough 12-11 defeat this past Tuesday here at the hands of St. John’s Prep, who split with the Eagles this year, with B.C. High winning the rematch.

Thus, for the Cardinal players, this win gives them a sense of status they possibly didn’t think the might get.

“They came in ranked 14th in the country,” Kiely said. “We’ve had a couple of top 20 losses already. It feels great to know we’re one of the best teams in the country. … It feels great to get that out of state win because we don’t get that many.”

Yes, that’s what the Cards were looking for.

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