Telegraph ;photo by TOM KING The Nashua Silver Knights celebrate their FCBL championship win Saturday night after the final pitch of a 5-3 win over Worcester at Holman Stadium.

NASHUA – They plead the fifth.

Actually, they celebrate the fifth. The Nashua Silver Knights successfully concluded the Drive For Five on Saturday night, taking their fifth Futures Collegiate Baseball League crown in the circuit’s 10 years with a 5-3 deciding Game 3 victory over their rivals, the Worcester Bravehearts, before a lively crowd of 800-plus at Holman Stadium.

Nashua’s last three title wins have come over the Bravehearts, beginning with back-to-back wins in 2016-17. It’s no easy task as the Bravehearts have won four titles and have incredibly been in the championshp series every season since they came into the league in 2014.

And it looked like Worcester may win the race to be the first FCBL team to win five, after a 3-2 win in Game 1 at Holman on Thursday. But Nashua took Game 2 Friday 5-1 after scoring five runs in the first and last night followed that script to take a 3-0 lead in the first on a three-run home run by Dylan Jones.

“I told the boys earlier in the locker room that we had to jump on them in the first inning and get the starter (the Bravehearts’ Jack Steele) out of the game,” Jones said. “And that’s exactly what we did.”

And eight innings later, the celebration pile was formed on the third base side of the pitcher’s mound after Brandon Dufault struck out Worcester’s Tyler Patane for the third out, with the tying runs at first and third.

“I wouldn’t trade these guys for the world,” Silver Knights manager Kyle Jackson, who was named a week ago FCBL Manager of the Year. “Someone was looking down on me. … It was a team effort. You can’t pick one kid that didn’t do something for the team.”

With two out in the first, Jared Dupere drew a walk and Finals MVP Kyle Bouchard – five RBIs in the series – hit a single. Jones, hitting fifth, waited for his pitch from Wallace and he got it.

“I got ahead in the count (2-1),”Jones said. “With two on, I thought I was going to get a fastball, and it came.”

Another first inning barrage.

“Especially with two outs,” Jackson said. “They knew their pitching staff was good, I told them before they would have to jump on all their starters to get to their bullpen, but their bullpen was just as good as ours was.”

“We talked about it last night,” Worcester manager Alex Dion said. “In a championship series like this, especially in a deciding Game 3, you can’t give a crooked number in the first and expect to win….Tip your cap to Nashua, they did more than us this series. I’m happy for them.”

Nashua needed more, however, because the Bravehearts didn’t beat them six of eight during the regular season by laying down. On Friday, the Knights scored all five in the first and did not get a base hit out of the outfield thereafter. It was starting to look that way as Steele shut them down for the next three innings and then Dartmouth’s Justin Murray was doing the same. Clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Knights snapped out of their funk but left the bases loaded in the seventh, but then again, so did the Bravehearts.

Murray proved mortal, as Bouchard led off the eighth with a double into the right field corner. Then after Jones moved him over to third, Ben Rounds rapped an 0-2 pitch the other way to left to score Bouchard and make it a 4-2 game.

“He’s a really good pitcher,” Rounds said. “He got me down. On the third pitch, I was expecting change-up, because he got me out on that in my last at bat. I just shortened my swing up, because I wanted to be ready for the fastball too. He left it up, I made solid contact, and it felt awesome.”

It ended up being the game winner. In the ninth, walks to Troy Schreffler, Jr. and Jared Dupere, plus a wild pitch, set the table for a Bouchard sacrifice fly to give Nashua some cushion at 5-2.

“I could breathe a little bit easier,” Jackson said. “Just having those extra two was big.”

But he had to take a lot of deep breaths in the ninth. Jackson built a bridge to that frame, as Silver Knights starter Pat Harrington went 4.2 innings, giving up two runs. His third pitch was hit over the billboards on left by Worcester leadoff hitter Matt Shaw in the bottom of the first and Shaw hit into a fielder’s choice to plate another run in the second. Then Harrington gave way to Jack Dicenso for a third of an inning and then winning pitcher Gabe Driscoll came in for a scoreless inning and a third.

Incredibly, after two innings Friday, Chris Chaney tossed 1.1 innings last night, replaced by Brandon Dufault in the eighth with two out and a man on.

Dufault got Tyler Patane to ground out to end the inning, and the question was whether the Northeastern closer from Windham, who has had his struggles coming back from an oblique injury, could finish things out.

He had Worcester down to its last strike three straight times. The first two ended up being an RBI double by league MVP Ben Rice and a walk to Bravehearts cleanup hitter Ben McNeil. With runners at the corners, though, Dufault, after a mound visit by Jackson, finished the job on a swing and miss by Patane to start the celebration.

“I talked to him and said, ‘Just breathe, enjoy the moment,” the manager said. “Whether we win or lose, just go out there, throw it down the middle, lose with your best stuff. It was his game… I trust him.”

And, as he said, he trusted all of them.

“This group of guys is a great group of guys,” Jones said. “We have talent everywhere, even on the bench and the bullpen. Coming through in this game, after losing Game 1, we knew we had to come back from the bottom.”

And they’re back on top for – you guessed it – the fifth time.

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