Telegraph photo by TOM KING The Nashua Defenders celebrate with Will Brooks, second from left, after his grounder produced a 4-3 win and NHCBL quarterfinal series sweep of the Concord Cannons Saturday at Bishop Guertin's Elliott Field.

NASHUA – The same thing that caused the Nashua Defenders to have a sub-par regular season enabled them Saturday to pull off a major playoff upset in the NHCBL quarterfinals.

Yes, the error of their ways spread to the opposition when Concord shortstop Adrian Siravo couldn’t handle a sharp grounder off the bat of Will Brooks in the bottom of the 10th. It scored Nashua’s Isaac Zhang with the winning run, 4-3, as the Defenders swept the top-seeded Cannons 2-0 in the best-of-three series. They took the first game Friday night in Concord, 3-2.

Nashua (10-11-1) now moves on to a three-game semifinal series with No. 4 seed Upper Valley (Lebanon). As of now, Game 1 is Tuesday at 5:30 at Lebanon, with the second game set for Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Elliott Field.

The game took three more frames than the Defenders would have wanted, as Concord (17-4-1) scored three unearned runs, two in the sixth and one in the seventh, to rally from a 3-0 deficit at an Elliot Field dustbowl.

But the Defenders bounced back, squandering chances in the seventh and ninth to win it.

“It’s just about resiliency,” Nashua manager Tim Lunn said. “And mindset. They had the right mindset going in and they didn’t really let it get to them. Obviously you’re upset you blew the lead, but that’s how baseball is. … You’ve got to kind of weather the storm every so often. … It’s character building.”

The great pitching duel between Concord’s Siravo and Nashua’s Zach Finkelstein seemed ages ago by the time the game ended. Siravo struck out the first six he faced, finishing with 13 in six innings. Finkelstein, meanwhile, wiggled out of trouble and fanned nine in six and a third.

“First couple of innings I thought maybe he didn’t have it,” Lunn said, “but he really locked in at that point. The defense didn’t pick him up when we needed it to, but it all worked out.”

Also, using the same tightrope act he used in last summer’s extra inning state Legion title game, Defenders reliever Varun Lingadal tossed 3.2 scoreless frames to get the win. He got a double play relieving Finkelstein in the seventh after the Cannons tied it; escaped a bases loaded jam in the ninth and fanned Concord’s Connor Treybig with the go-ahead run at third in the 10th.

“Somehow,” Lingadal said with a grin, “I survived.”

“It’s a good matchup, and whoever does the little things right with teams that close is going to win the game,” said Concord skipper Eric Duquette, whose team had the leadoff man on in seven of the 10 innings. “We haven’t been able to get that key hit.

“They had two legit opportunities to score (in Friday’s Game 1) and they scored both times. Today they had five legit opportunities to score and they scored in four of them.”

Nashua broke through on Siravo with an unearned run on Zhang’s RBI hit in the third, and then took a 3-0 lead in the fourth with two more unearned runs, one on a throwing error and the other on Hayden Shattuck’s RBI double.

Concord got two unearned in the sixth when a Siravo hit with a man on was misplayed in left, and an infield error plated the second run. In the seventh, another infield error leading off led to an Owen Kellington game-tying RBI single, 3-3.

And on it went. In the bottom of the 10th, Zhang drew a walk with one out off Concord reliever Jonah Wachter. A wild pitch put him on second, and after an intentional walk to Dan Trzepacz, Wachter fanned Kyle Hsu for the second out. But Brooks hit a sharp grounder that had Siravo been able to scoop up he had an easy force at second. Nope, as it bounced off him into the outfield.

“I pretty much knew off the bat it was going to be a really tough play for the shortstop because it was up the middle,” Brooks said. “Once I saw it kick, it was exciting. That was a great game. We fought. It was great.”

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The Defenders were without Hunter Routhier, whose older brother was reportedly killed early Saturday morning in a motorcycle accident. Finkelstein, Lunn said, was the only player he told prior to the contest as he is close to the family. Lunn told the rest of the players after the game.

“It’s terrible,” said Brooks. “I feel so bad. Now we’re going to go out there (in the remaining rounds) and do it for (Hunter) and the family.”

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