New No. 1 this week in WGAM/Telegraph Poll

WGAM The Game/NashuaTelegraph poll for 10-15]-12

1. Exeter (6)

2. Pinkerton (3)

3. Winnacunnet

4. Bedford

5. Keene

6. Bishop Guertin

7. Souhegan

8. Manchester Central

9. Plymouth

10. Nashua South

(first place votes)

Others receiving votes: Portsmouth (2), Milford (1), Concord (1)

Not sure if the voters were trying to stir up discussion or if the D1 bias has made polls irrelevant.

Let's see Winny beats Exeter, Exeter beats Pinkerton - so they were deemed better than both for 3-4 weeks.

About a month ago Winny beats Bedford, Bedford gets better, plays better, and beats Keene, BG, Dover - all solid teams. BG lost to Pinky early and by many accounts it was a closer game than the score. BG also kept Latimore mostly in check (save for punting to him once). Since that time Latimore has been a difference maker in more than one game. Bedford beat BG in all phases and quite frankly was a better balanced team than Pinkerton. Keene beats Winny who is competing without Fransozo at 100%. Keene lost to Bedford by 1 in a game which I'm sure Keene wishes they could play over.

So now we look at what the voters do - wait, Keene is 5th? How does that happen? Bedford is 4th, but they're playing better football now than 2 teams above them. Winny just lost and hasn't played the same in the last 2 weeks, but yet they're rewarded for prior success and voted 3rd. Pinky is rewarded for their out of state win over Brockton, a team playing without its starting QB. Exeter just continues to play sound, disciplined football racking up wins and not making mistakes, so no issue with them getting #1 votes.

How Bedford and/or Keene don't get a #1 vote is perplexing. Cannot use the "how they are playing now" argument to back up your vote since both Bedford and Keene are playing better than Winny right now. To me it just says like usual D2 teams aren't given their just due even though their schedule is just has hard if not harder than the D1 teams. I see from Thaler's twitter widget where he says "No NH team has/will play tougher non-NH foe.". Really? Dover may be able to lay claim that undefeated King Phillip was a superior team (KP won 43-0 against another 5-0 team this week, while Brockton lost to a NH team, so they will drop). While ESPN had Brockton #8 and King Phillip #11, the boston.com poll had King Phillip #6 and Brockton #12. Oh and where is Dover in the NH poll? Who ridiculed whom when they continued to vote for Dover? I guess Thaler just wants to put Pinky on the pedestal without perhaps doing all his homework... Just like was done with Central before he finally realized that Central just wasn't that good...

JAF has spoken..............well said!!

I am still trying to folow your logic. I think I agree with it, but need another liquid refreshment to fully understand. I also think you have way too much free time on your hands.....

Have at it people...I'm a little surprised to see Winny still ranked 3rd in both polls...but I suggest you look at the total points which determine the rankings...it's REALLY close between Winny, Bedford and Keene.


UNION LEADER/WGIR/WMUR FOOTBALL POWER POLL

Oct. 15, 2012

The top 10 high school football teams in New Hampshire, as voted by the eight members of the staffs of the New Hampshire Union Leader, WGIR AM and FM, and WMUR-TV after Week 7 of the 2012 NHIAA season, with first-place votes/points in parentheses:

THIS WEEK / LAST WEEK

1 (tie). Exeter, 6-1 (5/74) / 1. Winnacunnet, 6-0 (8/80)

1 (T). Pinkerton, 6-1 (2/74) / 2. Exeter, 5-1 (71)

3. Winnacunnet, 6-1 (57) / 3. Pinkerton, 5-1 (65)

4 (T). Bedford, 6-1 (56) / 4. Bedford, 5-1 (54)

4 (T). Keene, 6-1 (1/56) 5. Keene, 5-1 (44)

6. Manchester Central, 5-2 (39)/ 6. Nashua South, 4-2 (37)

7. Bishop Guertin, 4-2 (29) / 7. Manchester Central, 4-2 (25)

8. Nashua South, 4-3 (22) / 8. Bishop Guertin, 3-2 (24)

9. Souhegan, 6-1 (18) / 9. Souhegan, 5-1 (15)

10. Plymouth, 7-0 (9) / 10. Concord, 4-2 (14)



OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES (points in parentheses): Portsmouth, 5-1 (4), Concord, 4-3 (2)

HERE'S MY BALLOT...

1.Exeter...with the loss by Winnacunnet the Blue Hawks are back on top by a hair over Pinkerton. I still put a lot of value in the Week 2 win over the Astros in Derry that came when Exeter was still playing without Colby Swane and Logan Laurent who returned for the next game and have made the defending champs even better.

2.Pinkerton...the Astros are playing their best football of the year right now and I give them big props for beating Brockton on Friday. That said I can't discount Exeter's head to head win. Neither can Pinkerton coach Brian O'Reilly who told me and Marc Thaler on the radio on Sat morning that Exeter should be #1.

3.Bedford...the Bulldogs continue their upward climb in the rankings after another solid win last week, this one a last second victory on the road against a hard luck Dover team some feel is one of the best 1-6 teams in NH High School football history. Bedford's schedule is favorable the rest of the way too with a bye this week followed by a road game @ Spaulding and then Merrimack at home to close out the regular season.

4.Keene...I moved the Blackbirds up 1 spot this week and ahead of Winnacunnet for 2 reasons. The 1st is because they convincingly beat the Warriors head to head on Friday night. The 2nd reason is because the Winnacunnet team of today is not the same team they were when they beat both Bedford and Exeter in September.

5.Winnacunnet...dropping these guys all the way down to #5 from the 1st place spot they held for several weeks seems kind of harsh, but when you look at recent trends and the quality of teams I have ranked ahead of them I can't see how you can argue they should be higher right now. I saw the loss to Keene in person and like I said before, this Warriors team is not as good they were before and it's primarily because of injuries to RB Ben Franzoso and lineman Christian Dyer who are both toughing it out by playing banged up, but you can tell they aren't 100%.

6.Manchester Central...if Dover is the most hyped 1-6 team in the annals of NH High School football, the 5-2 Little Green may be the most maligned. Yeah they got crushed by Exeter 49-0(I was at the game) and yeah they only beat North by 3...and allowing Trevor Knight's 71 yd TD run in the final seconds was kinda like watching Russell Wilson beat the Pats deep for the winning score in Seattle the other day, but seriously now...why all the Central haters? No one's saying these guys are Jim Schubert era caliber, but they are definitely good enough to comfortably be Top 10. And no, I'm not a Little Green alum(Nashua High Class of 88) and no one at the Union Leader or WGIR is making vote for Central.

7.BG...the bye week following the Bedford loss was just what the doctor ordered for the Cards as they finally got both CJ Boykin and Pat Bilodeau back from injury. Both guys paid immediate dividends as Boykin scored on a long kick return and Bilodeau helped out on defense and also got to take some snaps at QB during the game. They do still have 2 really tough games with Keene coming to Nashua on Sat Oct 27th and then the regular season finale at Winnacunnet.

8.Nashua South...the Panthers were unable to follow the big win at Central with another even more impressive win at Exeter last Friday night. I still like South as the 4th playoff team in D1 behind Exeter, Pinkerton & Central...and they can thank their gate city rivals Nashua North for knocking off Concord to open the postseason door for them.

9.Plymouth...another team that a lot of people think shouldn't get Power Poll love because they play down in Division 4 against weaker competition. Even my radio co host Marc Thaler hasn't been won over by the Bobcats D4 domination yet. But as I've said before and I'll say it again, my personal ballot philosophy is to "reward" a great lower division team before penciling in the 5th best team in D1 or D2, especially in a year when those leagues aren't very deep top to bottom. If these rankings actually meant something important like determining playoff positioning I would probably feel differently.

10.Souhegan...the Sabers join my Top 10 because they haven't lost since a Week 1 41-7 shellacking by Winnacunnet. Mike Belliveau's team has taken care of business going undefeated in D3, including quality wins over playoff contenders Portsmouth and Milford. Interesting game vs Central this weekend, but I wonder if both teams will play their guys so close to the playoffs in this inter-division matchup.

rwvogeley wrote:I am still trying to folow your logic. I think I agree with it, but need another liquid refreshment to fully understand. I also think you have way too much free time on your hands.....

cliff notes for you just in case you had too much liquid refreshment :

A deeper D2 isn't getting its just due and won't because of D1 bias - there won't be an undefeated D2 team because they're equal. One of them beat Exeter who beat Pinky... So one could say all 3 of those teams are better than the top 2 D1 teams, right? At least in our virtual world!

Keene/ Bedford are playing better than Winny now, so they should be ranked higher... Yes, it's one point behind in the tally, but they're still behind Winny.

Took a jab at Thaler for his love of D1 teams - sure Brockton is usually a power house and yes they're ranked higher than King Phillip on the ESPN poll; however, there's a boston.com poll where they are ranked quite a bit lower. Just goes to prove polls are only as good as those who vote in them. In the case of NH - the voters that explain their votes have placed Winny 5th, but they still get voted at 3rd meaning there must be enough of those "silent voters" who could be asleep. Another Thaler-ism - he has BG 10th on his ballot - is that because he doesn't like BG or does he really think BG would lose to or is worse than South, Central, Souhegan, and Portsmouth??? Can you take his vote seriously?

FWIW: I type fast and have fresh caffeine in the system

FYI - Central has not beaten a team with a winning record.

Just thought I would throw that out there. I know there are some voters who are in with the Little Green.

My Gtown just keeps winning. I heard the coach on the radio. Seems like a great guy. Very humble.

Those voters will probably make an excuse for the D1 team playing a D3 team... Too many Manch area votes to drop them especially since they lost by 1 score to a higher ranked team.

After watching that Spaulding wedge offense last night I have to assume that Dover got a big lead causing Spaulding to try to open things up.

Spaulding just drove the ball in their opening possession getting 3-5 yards a pop in a cloud of (literal) dust to take a 6-0 lead (XP was wayyy off). In their second possession a very curious pass play was called and the only open receiver was a BG linebacker who caught the ball. After very successfully driving the ball down the throat of the defense why would you open your second series with a pass? I know, mix it up, but gee don't you think you need to force the other team to stop you first? Anyway, BG drove to about the 1 foot line, but 3 penalties and slow play calling forced a FG try. Not much happened until just before half Spaulding drives again and "could" have had a touchdown, but I think an official thought a different Spaulding player had the ball when in fact it was another that had bounced off the player who was on the ground causing a whistle to blow. They had to settle for a FG giving them a 9-3 half time lead. The BG offense couldn't find any rhythm - whether it was what Spaulding was doing defensively or the slowness with which the plays get called - who knows.

BG kicks off in the second half and immediately picks up a personal foul call because the Spaulding player who jumped on the loose ball at around the 10 yard line and was lying there was "touched" by the BG gunner. To be fair the Spaulding player was on top of the ball for a couple of seconds. I think it was the right call by rule, but how is any different from an onside kick where a player turtles on the ball and 2 seconds later gets pummeled. That play started waking up the slumbering Cards, but it was the next 4 downs that really got them fired up. On 2nd/3rd down a slow or quiet whistle before/after the ball was popped in the air giving the appearance of a fumble got the sidelines really fired up. Then the BG players and fandom thought they stopped Spaulding on a very close 4th down play. Some would say a suspect spotting of the ball gave Spaulding a first down - who knows I'm not on the field. But right after that the D got very inspired, forced Spaulding to punt, and the freshly inspired O went to work ripping off huge chunks of real estate. Easy to call plays when your last one got 15+ yards... The most successful play was a QB read and keep on a dive play to the right and the QB "sprinted" through the gaping hole on the other side. A quick 3 TD's in the next 12 minutes as a result of a momentum swing put Spaulding down 24-9 with 8 minutes to play. In that span the Spaulding O got 6 plays - as the D forced two 3&outs. Spaulding did score a late TD on a pass and run with about 2 mins left, but the ensuing onside kick was covered by a BG player. BG was able to get a quick 15-20 yards on their first play, but was stopped on their next two. Spaulding did use their last timeout in that span, but there just weren't enough ticks on the clock and the slow spotting of the ball for ready to play gave BG just enough time to ice the clock.

BG has two tough tests - a probably pretty ticked off Keene team who may have been looking past West to BG after beating the #1 team. Then a Winny team that may have Franzoso back after resting his legs for a couple of weeks. He didn't play yesterday and it seems he won't play next week vs. Merry... They won't need him - I mean c'mon even Dover beat Merry

GNG - unfortunately, none of those voters read this blog and/or have common sense. Central will still make their top ten polls since most had Souhegan as #9/#10.

JAF - while I don't understand the playcalling for Spaulding to open that second drive, BG definitely jumped on the opportunity. Good pressure up the middle caused an errant throw and Kiczuk was right there to grab it. To put some things out there....if Realle and Kiczuk aren't first team all-staters this year it will prove Cote doesn't understand who's actually running his defenses. Remember last year when Cornell wasn't first team despite being in on just about every tackle, but Carver made first team as a linebacker? Just something to think about since all state voting comes down to pretty much who the head coach argues should make it.

After Central losing another game to a team that is even with them or above them, it will be interesting to see where Central is ranked, if at all in the Top 10. If Central is still in the Top 10 after the Souhegan loss then it will confirm my thought .............

........ That Central is the Notre Dame of NH high school football.