Winthrop football defeats Saugus

SAUGUS – James Barker might be getting a handle on the quarterback position, as evidenced by his four touchdown passes in leading Winthrop over Saugus, 28-21 at Stackpole Field on Saturday.Click here for a photo gallery.Barker led the Winthrop (3-3) offense, which featured big play passing attempts sprinkled over a running game made up of power sweeps. It was the running of Mitchell Paulson (16-82), Robert Diaz (13-62), and Ruben Powell (14-55) that opened up the field for Barker to throw for 199 yards and four touchdowns.”(Barker) has really been picking up what he needs to do as a quarterback,” said Winthrop coach Sean Driscoll. “He’s starting to read the field better every day. He really is a competitor and came up big today.””Both teams played through to the end,” said Saugus coach Mike Broderick. “We had some good defense at the beginning and then in the second half our offense started to fight. We had our chances in this game.”The first half saw Winthrop’s offense move up and down the field. Yet the Saugus (2-4) defense came up big, twice holding the Vikings on goal-line stands, with Jeremy Kane recovering a Winthrop fumble on fourth-and-one on the one-yard line and bruising captain Tom Trainor making a big stick on Barker’s fourth-and-three from the four-yard line.It seemed the half was going to end without either team scoring, but with 1:42 remaining, Barker found Powell over the middle for a 28-yard touchdown. Not to be outdone, Saugus bounced back on the ensuing kickoff with Ryan Henehan returning the ball 75 yards for a touchdown. The teams headed into the locker room at the half tied 7-7.The second half featured more consistent offense from both sides, with Saugus’ Anthony Guthro leading the rushing attack. In the third quarter, Guthro found the end zone from 25 yards out to give Saugus the lead. Guthro finished with 158 yards rushing on the day.Yet Barker found Quinton Dale on a 15-yard touchdown pass to knot the score at 13. And when Diaz managed to get well behind the Saugus secondary, Barker found him for an 80 yard score to give the Vikings a 20-13 lead.”(Winthrop) made the passing plays today,” said Broderick. “We have to shore up our pass defense if we want to win.”The fight, however, was not out of Saugus. The Sachems put together a 9-play drive that culminated in Nick Benoit grinding out a 12-yard touchdown. Guthro’s two-point conversion gave Saugus a 21-20 lead with just over four minutes remaining in the game.With a sense of urgency, the Winthrop offense took to the field, getting off plays at a furious pace. In three minutes, the Vikings ripped off 11 plays – a mixture of Diaz and Powell sweeps and Barker completions. Barker found Jake McKinnon from 13 yards out to help give the Vikings a 28-21 lead and the win.”This was a gutty performance by our team,” said Driscoll. “We had two of our key players go down, we were stopped twice inside the five, and it just seemed like we were going to have one of those days. Then this team really came together and came up with a big win for our program.”