A host of Panthers swarm to the football to bring down Pinkerton's Joseph Osanya (10) durng their meeting to end the regular season two weeks ago. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Josh Porter is a big proponent of finishing strong.

That’s why the Nashua High School South football coach was glad the No. 4 8-2 Panthers had some tough games down the stretch. Yes, they lost to Manchester Memorial, but beat Merrimack, Pinkerton and Londonderry in succession and now have a rematch with city rival No. 5 Bishop Guertin (8-2) Friday night at Stellos Stadium in the Division I quarterfinals.

“We’ve gotten better and better as the last few weeks have gone along,” Porter said. “Hopefully we haven’t hit the peak yet. We’re going to try to climb that mountain each week. But it’s definitely no secret we’ve been rolling the last few weeks for sure.”

South has had a mix. They pulled away in scoring 51 points vs. Merrmack, rallied past Pinkerton 25-21 after being down 21-7 late in the third quarter, and blew Londonderry away 44-15 in the Division I prelims last Friday night at Stellos Stadium.

In that game, the Panthers started fast. “The big emphasis going into last weekend’s game was let’s start fast, take the stress off,” Porter said.

What’s improved since Memorial beat the Panthers 46-28 back on Oct. 17.?

The numbers will tell you: Defense.

“We kind of got punches in the mouth a little bit against Memorial,” Porter said. “On the defensive side of the ball we’re just swarming to the ball. We learned, and we’ve been fantastic against the run game and taking that away from our opponents. Pinkerton got a couple of sweeps on us and it was like, ‘Hey, enough.’

“We made a big emphasis at it on practice every day and it really showed this past week against Londonderry. We did a good job bottling up their run and making them one-dimensional, which is always a key to defense. Take something away, try and make them play left-handed a little bit.”

Leading the way defensively or South are the players up front, such as Kevin Hamel and Ray Karuru plus linebackers Ted Smiley and Bruno Goncalves at linebacker. Karuru, Porter said, “the last three games has been phenomenal.”

There are a ton of others, like Colvin Levesque, Josh Tripp, Justin Fish in the secondary, plus more. Porter turns on the film and sees as many as eight Purple jerseys at any time around the ball carrier. That makes it tough.

Meanwhile, the Pinkerton game was huge for the Panthers. It put them in high intensity mode.

“It gives you more confidence,” Porter said. “When you can compete against teams like that and come away with a win, that goes a long way, right?

“To this point, we’ve had a couple of big wins, but we get to the Bedfords or Memorial, we fell a little bit short. Let’s get over the hump here and show we are a real contender, you know?”

Of course, as you get into the playoffs, each week is tougher. Porter believes his team played the hardest schedule and “We’re battle tested because of it.”

And that had made a veteran team even more focused.

“We’ve grown a lot over the last four or five weeks,” Porter said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the boys put it on display for everybody.”