Pitcher Nolan LIncoln, top right, and the rest of the Nashua Silver Knights celebrate their 3-0 win over New Britain Tuesday night that lands them in the FCBL Finals. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – They’re baaaaaaaack…

Yes, the Nashua Silver Knights are returning tonight to the Futures Collegiate Baseball League Finals by virtue of their 3-0 win over New Britain before 1,392 fans at Holman Stadium, completing a two-game sweep.

Nashua will head to Burlington, Vt. to face the defending champion Vermont Lake Monsters, owned by former Nashua Pride owner Chris English, in tonight’s Game 1 of the finals at the University of Vermont’s Centennial Field. The Lake Monsters wrapped up their two-game sweep of Westfield with a 10-2 win.

Game 2 will be Thursday at Holman Stadium, and if necessary, a deciding Game 3 will be in Vermont on Friday.

The key for Nashua in their two-game sweep? Pitching. It was so good, last night’s game took just one hour, 59 minutes. While Aiven Cabral mowed down New Britain in its ballpark on Monday, Londonderry’s Nolan Lincoln, who won a Division III national title at Eastern Connecticut and wasn’t even sure he could pitch a couple of days ago due to a bicep strain and a brief illness. But Monday he told Nashua manager Kyle Jackson and assistant pitching coach Spencer Bergeron he was good to go.

And he turned in a gem, six innings of one-hit ball with no walks and four strikeouts. Reliever Will Andrews (Wake Forest) was even better, nine up, nine down with five strikeouts.

“Nolan threw 57 pitches in six innings,” Jackson said. “Which is unbelievable against that team, the way they can hit. He just kept them off balance, made them put it in play and the defense was phenomenal.

“I love these types of close games. We’ve got to rise to the occasion. … I’m super proud of these guys, they deserve it.”

Jackson didn’t have a starter in mind for tonight’s Game 1.

“We always say all you’ve got to do is make it to the championship, and anything can happen,” he said. “We’ll see what we’re going to come up with. It may be bullpen, I don’t know.”

Nashua Silver Knights starter Nolan Lincoln delivers a pitch during his six innings of shutout work in the FCBL Semis at Holman Stadium on Tuesday night. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

Lincoln credited the training staff with getting him ready for last night, “and I felt amazing. … Once you’re into that game, the crowd gets going, and all you’re worried about is pitching, you’re not worried about anything else.

“All three pitches were working, I was able to hit my spots. The big thing was the defense around me.”

And he mentioned the best play, a diving catch by Shane McNamara in right in the early innings.

As usual, Nashua came up with unlikely heroes. Last night it was catcher Kyle DeRoma out of WPI, who was playing in a city league in Malden, Mass. when the Knights called him after injuries wiped out their catching corps.

He swung at the first pitch from New Britain starter Bryan Krauss and put it over the right center field wall for the only run Nashua would need.

“I got the call, came up, and the rest is history,” DeRoma said. “It was just fastball, I was kind of hunting for it, and I got it and I was ready for it. Now we’re in the championship, baby.”

DeRoma is in the center of all of this as he caught all the Nashua pitchers the last two nights. “Whatever pitch I need, they’re going to throw,” he said. “They just ball out, honestly. They can throw anything for strikes and get swings and misses whenever they need (them).They just ball out.”

New Britain finished as the second seed (37-26), but the Bees managed just six hits in two games.

“They say pitching and defense wins championships, right?” Bees skipper Matt Gedman said. “The longer you can throw zeros, the better chance you have for your bats to be alive.”

Nashua got two runs in the bottom of the eighth. With runners at first and third, New Britain’s third pitcher of the night, Benny Wilson, threw wildly to first and that plated McNamara with the second run. Johnny Knox made it all the way to third and scored on a wild pitch.

Nashua actually thought it had a run off Krauss win the first inning, when Kyle Wolff appeared to score all the way from first on a ball hit off the wall by McNamara. But it actually hit the turf and took a crazy bounce all the way up to the billboards behind the fence, and came back in. Thus it was ruled a ground rule double, Wolff had to go back to third and Ray Velazquez popped out end the threat.

“In my nine years here, I’ve never seen that before,” Jackson said.

But he’s seen the Finals. And a team that was 4-13 to start the season is right there.

As Lincoln said, “You play baseball games to win.”