Nda, Pittsfield Race Past Commerce
PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- The Pittsfield Generals Saturday got off to a quick start in a game that was anything but.
Emmanuel Nda scored the first of his three touchdowns in the first minute of the game as the Generals went on to a 44-6 win over Commerce on BCC’s Gene Dellea Field.
In a game marred by numerous penalties on both sides that dragged on for nearly three hours, Pittsfield snapped a two-game losing streak and improved to 2-2 on the year and 1-0 in the Suburban North.
Afterward, Generals coach Brian Jezewski said there was plenty that his team needs to clean up going into Friday night’s league road opener at Chicopee.
“I’m disappointed in how we played today,” Jezewski said. “I’m happy with the result, but I’m disappointed in our play, the penalties, the sloppiness. I think this was the longest football game in history.
“We have to get better if we want to make some noise in this league.”
Although Commerce (1-3) was matching the Generals penalty-for-penalty, Jezewski declined to give his team a pass as having played down to the level of the competition and instead focused on what Pittsfield has to do to get better.
“I felt that we played slow today,” he said. “We want to play up-tempo and fast in all three aspects of the ball. And I thought, as coaches, we did a bad job of preparing them to play at that tempo that we want to play at to maximize what we have athletically.
“We need to do better job with that, the guys need to do a better job, starting Monday, getting ready for a touch Chicopee game on Friday night.”
One of the bright spots for Pittsfield was the running of Nda, who ripped off two scoring runs of more than 45 yards and a 7-yarder that made it 14-0 after one quarter.
His 56-yarder gave him three straight scores and Pittsfield a 20-6 lead early in the second.
“He’s a hard-working kid,” Jezewski said. “He does a lot of work in the weight room. He did a great job for us last year on the JV and with coach [Joe] Albano and the track program in the spring.”
Pittsfield added one more score before half-time, a 1-yard plunge by QB D’Andre Johnson. And at the end of the third, an errant snap on a Commerce punt attempt gave the Generals a safety.
In the fourth quarter, Nda took a breather and Michael Charles and Shernan Banker carried the load, each scoring a touchdown to pad the final margin of victory.
Another positive for Jezewksi and his staff: the depth they showed on Saturday.
“Our schedule, just like everybody else in the county, is tough,” he said. “When you play a Division 7, perennial playoff team in Frontier, a very strong Division 5 team in East Longmeadow and a Division 3 team in Holyoke, we realized that we needed to start utilizing more depth. And we tried to do that today.
“We have a lot of numbers, but our depth has to improve as we move forward in our league.”
Photos from this game here.