Nashua South QB Cody Jackson tries to escape the reach of Merrimack defender Zach Retey (87) during Friday night's game in Merrimack. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

This Friday will be the biggest high school football game the Nashua South Panthers have played in the last few years.

Probably since their playoff game at Merrimack’s Student Memorial Field on Halloween weekend of 2020. Certainly their biggest regular season game other than their rivalry games with Nashua North.

That’s a credit to the incredible season they’ve had thus far, as the Panthers will bring a fairly dominant 7-0 to Bedford’s Bulldog Stadium Friday night to take on the equally unbeaten ‘Dogs.

It’s South’s first real, solid test of the season as well.

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” South coach Scott Knight said. “That’s for the one seed. The No. 1 seed. Pretty awesome.”

The winner at least wins the West Conference and gets a first-round bye in the playoffs that begin the weekend of Nov. 8. Knight is confident about his group, and why wouldn’t he be? The escaped Bishop Guertin by a 21-15 overtime game in their season opener, but since then have outscored the next six opponents by the combined count of 213-46. Yikes.

There’s the general thought that there are five or six extremely tough teams in Division I: Bedford, Pinkerton, Londonderry, Exeter, South and from what’s happened lately, Salem. In no particular order.

Count Merrimack coach Kip Jackson as being a big fan of Team South.

“I think they’re a top five team,” Jackson said, adding the Panthers have as good a shot as anyone of making the Final Four next month. “They have a really good coaching staff and great athletes at all levels.”

He knew that going into Friday night’s game and the fact South won 35-0, taking a 21-0 lead halfway through the first quarter just reinforced that. The Panthers have playmakers galore such as Kyle Emmons, Sam Levine, Colvin Levesque and several others, including QB Cody Jackson. Defensively they had a tough time early vs. Nashua North containing Luke Peters, but who doesn’t? That changed in the second quarter. They’ve trailed just once all year, 7-6 early vs. Manchester Central.

“They play everybody the same,” Knight said. “They come out and they play hard. And it’s been shown, because we’ve played a few teams that haven’t had maybe as much talent as we’ve had, and a lot of times when you have a good team, you’ll play down to someone’s leve. And we haven’t done that.

“For the most part, we’ve played everybody the same. The kids just go out and play hard. We’ll just keep doing that.”

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO FOR GUERTIN

With three games left prior to Saturday night’s game vs. Dover, Bishop Guertin had its postseason path pretty clear: win two of its last three to comfortably make the playoffs. One down, one to go after beating Dover 62-21 on Saturday night at one of the Cards’ homes away from home, Hollis Brookline’s stadium.

Guertin is now 5-2 overall, but 4-2 in Division I. They have a tough game Saturday at Salem – actually, that’s at another temporary home field for the Blue Devils, Haverhill (Mass.) High School. Salem is having its field redone, presumably for field turf.

“We’re going to go in there and we’re going to compete,” Nalen said. “We’re going to get the boys ready and see where the chips fall on Saturday.”

BG’s final regular season game is at Merrimack. This past weekend the Cards rushed for a whopping 300 yards as their running game seems to be at peak form.

“We haven’t had it since maybe the South time, at the beginning,” Nalen said. “We made some minor tweaks with some guys and how we run it. It worked out (Saturday) at least.”

And the Cardinals, who have been all about A.J. Holmes in the run game and otherwise, now have a threat in Cole Reeves, who blazed his way to two scores the other night. He’s stepped in after the season-ending injury to slot receiver/sometime back Sam Fayad.

“He’s getting a lot more touches now,” Nalen said, “and he’s showing why he’s one of our best players.”

ALVIRNE IN, BUT NOT RESTING

In August of 2023, then-new Alvirne football coach Matt Lee told his players that they needed to think big – as in making the playoffs. His simple reason was this: If you don’t set it as a goal, and believe it can be done, then it won’t happen.

Well how about this? Alvirne, getting its fifth regular season win, is more or less in the playoffs for a second straight year, 2 for 2 in the Lee coaching era.

“Yeah, five wins will definitely get us in,” Lee said. “Getting into the playoffs was one of our preseason goals. We’re happy about it, but we have bigger goals, and we need to refocus for next week.”

That would be a game at home Friday vs. Keene, and there could be wrinkle added to that one, as word out of Blackbird territory is that head coach Linwood Patnode has resigned. No details are known, however.

SOUHEGAN-PELHAM

The Sabers are now preparing for the second of their tough back-to-backs, set to host Pelham on Friday night. Now, while that is a colossal contest, it doesn’t have one ingredient: Pelham’s 47-game winning streak, fourth best in the nation, is history. Yes, in case you hadn’t heard, Trinity, which moved up to Division II after winning the Division III title last year, knocked off the Pythons 41-28 on Friday. Souhegan, Trinity and Pelham are all 6-1 while Plymouth, which edged the Sabers in OT the other night, is still unbeaten at 7-0. Friday’s game in Amherst will be for the top spot in the West Conference.