North Babylon Onto Suffolk Championship Game

52 points -- sounds like enough to put a football team in the driver's seat and position them for a comfortable win.

The North Babylon Bulldogs needed most of those 52 points, however, to stay ahead of East Islip in the playoff semifinals Saturday.

In a game that lived up to its expectations, the explosive Bulldogs kept pace with East Islip in the first half of a game characterized by three lead changes, plenty of offensive fireworks, a number of bad breaks, before pulling away 52-41.

"Their quarterback (Casey Nolan) is a talented football player," said North Babylon coach Terry Manning after the game. "We didn't do so good stopping his running game in the first half."

In fact Nolan ran for 100 yards in the first two quarters, averaging nearly 10 yards a carry, before North Babylon put a lid on him.

Fortunately for North Babylon, Nolan's equally impressive passing game -- 307 yards on the day, most of them to Nick Osburn -- wasn't enough to keep up with the Bulldogs.

But it was close.

In fact the Bulldog's lead was only five points early the fourth quarter and the offense looked to be staggering into a 3rd and 19 situation -- when the North Babylon offense caught fire and ran away with it.

That fourth quarter turnaround came on the legs of the Bulldogs' Melijah Purvis, whose running game had been more or less stymied in the first half. But in a series of plays that broke East Islip's back, Purvis ran for 20 yards to erase the 3rd and 19 deficit, and then reeled off another 34 yards in three successive plays, setting up a two play TD cap by fullback Connor Slane.

And on the ensuring East Islip possession, Purvis promptly picked off a Casey Nolan pass and dashed 50 yards for another TD.

In the space of four minutes North Babylon had put the lid on an East Islip offense that had shown plenty of effectiveness in both its running and passing game.

There were a number of other key moments in the game. Memorable moments.

Jake Conner's 36 yard bomb to TE Joseph Sonnenberg to make it 7-7 on the Bulldogs' first possession exposed a considerable height advantage in the secondary that North Babylon would exploit effectively.

A seven minute stretch at the outset of the second half, turning a 14-20 deficit into a 35-27 North Babylon advantage, was big.

That was keyed in part on an opportunistic Slane, who pounced on an errant EI pitchout to set up the second TD; and by an alert David Addames, who regained possession for the Bulldogs on a mishandled kickoff return.

The numbers reveal that, by the end of the day, North Bab's attack was a balanced one. Jake Conner had 112 yards rushing, 189 passing, and particularly good showing on kickoff returns. Melijah Purvis, who was held to a handful of yards rushing in the first half, finished with 53 on the ground and 98 in the air. And Connor Slane muscled his way for 33 yards rushing and 44 on receptions.

North Babylon's win puts them in a position to take on 8-2 Riverhead for the Suffolk County division crown this coming Sunday. Game time is 12 noon at SUNY Stony Brook.