Milford's Jace Wilhelmi, right, and Eli Gutierrez team up to bring down Manchester West's Elias Abreu during Friday night's game. The Blue Knights won 34-0. (Photo by Joe Marchelena/NH-HSports.com)

MILFORD – There is getting good field position, and then there is what the Manchester West High School football team did Friday night.

The Blue Knights had six first-half possessions against Milford, and their average starting point was the Spartans’ 33-yard line.

West capitalized on that advantage just enough, while the defense and special teams were dominant, on the way to a 34-0 win over the Spartans in a Division II West Conference game.

“I thought we played really physical,” West coach Andrew Provencher said. “I thought we played really hard. I think that we weren’t executing very well, but we are undoubtedly playing tough football, and that’s good to see.”

The Blue Knights (4-1) scored on their first two possessions for the fourth time in five games, as Gio Doria and Noah Sheedy connected for scoring passes of 25 and 22 yards, respectively. Liam King also had two rushing touchdowns and Jarome Henert added another.

But it was the performance on defense and special teams that pushed West over the top.

The Blue Knights held Milford to just 51 yards of offense, recovered two fumbles and didn’t allow the Spartans to cross midfield until late in the second quarter. In fact, neither team ran a play on West’s side of the field until under six minutes remained in the first half.

“I think that our defense was lights out and they were playing very fast and physical,” Provencher said. “You need to win in a lot of different ways and we were really good on defense, pretty solid on specials. That was able to make up for some execution errors on offense.”

Jace Wilhelmi led Milford with 30 yards rushing, but needed 14 carries to get to that number.

“I don’t think we executed very well on offense,” Milford coach Max Morrelli said. “I think if you go back and look at it, from play to play, we were competitive on most plays. The plays where we had hiccups, we either didn’t execute assignments or missed a tackle.”

Early on, those miscues seemed to come at the worst moment, as West converted on its first four third-down attempts, including both of Sheedy’s touchdowns. The junior finished with four catches for 68 yards.

“So proud of Noah,” Provencher said. “He’s a hard-working kid, a great kid. Two touchdowns, a couple of catches, and really excited to see him step into this role and make a lot out of it.”

Doria completed 11 of 20 passes for 150 yards while King had four catches for 35 yards and carried four times for 79 yards, including touchdown runs of 25 and 53 yards. Henert’s scoring run came from 40 yards out, but without the three scoring plays, the Blue Knights ran for just 18 yards on 22 carries.

“Milford is a tough team, those kids are tough dudes,” Provencher said. “I was proud of the way our guys competed.”