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Sports

KP Football Season Comes To An End

Warriors drop Eastern Mass Division 2 Semi-Final 7-0 to Duxbury.

King Philip rolled to a 9-1 record capturing its first ever Hockomock League Championship by scoring on its opponents.

Throughout the season, the Warriors averaged 31.9 points while allowing their opponent a mere 12.2 points per contest. Against Duxbury in the Eastern Massachusetts Division 2 Semi Final at Sgt. Jeffrey Mullin Field in Weymouth, the Warriors only allowed the Dragons to score 7 points, right around their season average.

Unfortunately, the offense was hard-pressed and fell far short of the 32 points they were used to scoring. The end result was King Philip’s season came to an end with no trip to Gillette Stadium as Duxbury held on to take the game 7-0.

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“Their defense gave us fits all game long, they just kept changing it up, they’re a hell of a football team,” Duxbury Head Coach Dave Maimaron said. “They should keep their heads up high, because they are one of the best teams we’ve played all year and they have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Ashamed? Definitely not. Disappointed? Absolutely. King Philip played Duxbury tough, and was on the verge of potentially tying the contest with less than 30 seconds left. On second and goal from the six-yard line, John Dillon was intercepted by senior defensive back Greg Williams to punch Duxbury’s ticket to Foxboro Saturday afternoon.

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Had King Philip been able to score, the contest most likely wouldn’t have gone into overtime.

“To get down to the six we normally would have gone to Charles (Ruffin). I may be thinking about it a lot tonight, but we’ve got a quarterback and some receivers and thought that we had a shot,” KP Coach Brian Lee said. “Had we scored, we were going for it (two-point conversion). There was going to be no overtime for us.”

For the majority of the contest, both sides flexed their defensive muscles while not allowing its opponent into the end-zone. 

On its second possession, Duxbury (10-0) was standing on the KP doorstep
pounding on the door, but the Warriors held strong and turned Matt O’Keefe and the rest of the Dragons away. The Duxbury quarterback was stopped at the one-yard line on fourth down.

For the rest of the first half, KP employed the "bend but don't break" policy, letting O’Keefe and his backs run wild (94 yards) in the middle of the field. On the other side of the ball, Duxbury was holding Ruffin in check. The senior back had a mere 24 yards in the first half, while the Warriors offense could only muster 54 total yards against the Dragons.

 “They swarmed to the ball,” Lee said. “They’re a physical team that’s much bigger than us and faster than us and that’s a bad combination to go up against. We had some plays, but couldn’t make a sustained drive.”

Maimaron believes it was his team having been in this environment before that help propel his team to victory. Duxbury will be playing in its second straight Super Bowl and fifth in school history.

“Having big game experience helped us a little bit,” the Duxbury coach said. “We’ve done this before. The fact that we have done this gave us a slight advantage and we needed every advantage we could get tonight.”

The games' only score on the evening came late in the third quarter, just after the rain began to fall when Jon Hurvitz rumbled 11 yards to reach the end-zone. The drive covered 76 yards on twelve plays (three passes, six runs and three
penalties).

Despite having their season come to an end, King Philip (a team that wasn’t even
mentioned in the pre-season rankings) has nothing to be ashamed of.

“Everyone talked about their offense, but that defense is no joke, we couldn’t get anything going,” Lee said. “We had an unbelievable effort tonight and I’m so proud of what these guys accomplished.”

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