READFIELD — Dakota Carter heard the verbal green light from his coaches to get after Maranacook’s quarterback, then put his pedal to the metal.

What happened after that was the kind of thing pass rushers dream about — a quarterback unaware of what was stalking him on his blind side, an exposed football, and a chance to change the course of a game.

Carter’s strip sack late in the first half set up the game’s first score, then Winthrop/Monmouth physically dominated the second half to defeat Maranacook 20-8 in a Western D Campbell Conference game Friday night at Ricky Gibson Field.

Matt Ingram threw for two touchdowns and Dustin Tripp rushed for 148 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries as the Ramblers (3-4) closed the regular season with a three-game winning streak after starting 0-4.

“The kids have bought in. Some teams, you start out 0-4 and you don’t know how (they will react). But these guys have had a positive attitude and stuck with it,” Winthrop/Monmouth coach Dave St. Hilaire said.

The Ramblers had to snuff out three Maranacook forays into their territory in the first half before Carter’s strip sack, which Tyler Gosselin recovered at the Black Bears’ 37 with a little under two minutes to play.

“It was a last-minute blitz call that I heard my coach yell at me, so I just took off and happened to get it,” Carter said.

Ingram (7-for-15, 89 yards, 2 TDs) then found a wide open Mario Meucci over the middle for an 18-yard TD strike with 19 seconds left in the half for a 6-0 lead.

Winthrop/Monmouth started the second half with back-to-back scoring drives featuring Tripp on the ground. The first was a 10-play 79-yard march capped by Ingram’s 13-yard TD pass to Carter down the right sideline. Backup kicker Tyler Cote’s PAT made it 13-0.

“I scored my first touchdown here (as a freshman) and it’s good to get my last regular-season touchdown here,” said Carter, a senior.

Andrew Pazdziorko’s sack on third down forced Maranacook (3-4) to punt on its next series, giving the Ramblers excellent field position at their own 49. Nine plays later, Tripp scored from two yards out to make it 20-0.

Tripp, a junior who transferred from Maranacook his sophomore year, was filling in for the injured Alex Brown at running back. Tripp himself was limited to defensive duty last week due to a hand injury but made the most of his opportunity Friday.

“In the third quarter we came out and we hit them hard,” he said. “The line picked it up in the second half and we just started pounding it.”

A turnover late in the third quarter set up Maranacook’s score. Josh Ehriorobo recovered a fumble at the Ramblers’ 35. Kyle Morand’s 11-yard touchdown pass to Levi Emery on 4th-and-9. Morand ran in the two-point conversion to cut the deficit to 20-8 early in the fourth.

The Ramblers stopped the Black Bears on downs near midfield on their next series, then Nate Scott’s interception sealed it.

Drew Davis rushed for 62 yards on 13 carries for Maranacook and Zach Lacasse rushed nine times for 51 yards, but the Black Bears managed just two first downs in the second half.

“We didn’t start two guys for different reasons on defense,” St. Hilaire said. “We put one in and then we did make a couple of adjustments just trying to clean up ‘C’ gap. Once we did that, the middle was kind of exposed a few times, but we took care of at least one problem instead of having two.”

Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638

rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @RAWmaterial33