Q&A with St. John's of Shrewsbury coach John Andreoli

A little over a week ago, MassVarsity caught up on the phone with St. John's of Shrewsbury coach John Andreoli. Last year, his Pioneers won the Division 3 state title over North Attleboro at Gillette Stadium.

St. John's is set to be one of the top teams in the state again, so we talked about what Andreoli and Co. have coming back and some of the other topics relevant to the program.

Here is an edited version of that conversation:

MV: So when are you joining the Catholic Conference?

JA: (Laughs) OK, well, I don't know. Maybe that will be on the table at some point.

MV: But seriously, has that ever been on the table for you guys? Do you have to be invited for that for that sort of thing to happen?

JA: I don't know what to tell you. All I can say in my 15th year here, as far as I know, it's never been on the table for us. I'm not sure anything can happen before then. I know before I was at St. John's, we played different teams in the Catholic Conference, but as far as I know, it's never something that we've been party to. So, I just don't know.

MV: It's just always one of those things that has been knocked around a bit and people, myself included, have always thought it would be a natural fit.

But, moving on to your team this year. You guys lost such a great quarterback in (Steve) Buccaglia (now a freshman at Assumption College).

JA: Yes, he's over there. We've got two guys from last year (at Assumption). (Wide receiver Zach) Pedone is over there, too. They've got two guys from our program, and they're really excited about it. Those guys will be contributing. We've got one guy already there, (defensive back) Mac Nkongchu. So we've got three guys there, three at Holy Cross, so it's nice to keep those guys local.

MV: Who's going to be your quarterback this year, or is that going to be a competition that's hashed out in August?

JA: I think it will be a great competition. We have two guys at the upper level that will compete at the position. We've got one of our captains, Shea Gallo. He took a lot of reps for us in practice. He's an athletic kid, a great leader.

And then we've got Colin Schofield, who will be a returning junior and he's a prototypical quarterback. He can run. He can throw. He makes good decisions. He did not play for us last year. He transferred out and then he came back to St. John's about halfway through the fall. He came to every practice and was as much a part of the team he could be. But he had a really good winter and summer. So that will be a good competition.

(Offensive coordinator) Chris Moriarty gets the most out of our guys, and has done it as many years as he's been here. Put it this way: whichever one wins the quarterback job, the other one will be on the field somewhere. It's nice when you have that kind of athleticism.

MV: Shea plays wide receiver, too, right?

JA: Yeah, he was in the slot last year. He ran our scout team and did a heck of a job. But he's an athletic kid. You can put him anywhere. He's a catcher in baseball. He's just a very versatile kid that is a great leader. He's going to play for us. It just depends on how the pieces fit together.

MV: When you look at your offense in general, what do you like?

JA: Really from the inside out, we've got two of our workhorses on the offensive line from last year coming back. Liam Daley who's a captain for us, and (junior) Andrew Stolberg. Both of them are 280 and 290, and they're mobile kids and they played pretty much every snap last year. They were 100 percent snaps last year.

From a foundational standpoint, you start with that, and then we've got a bunch of younger guys coming up who played quite a bit on the offensive line. One of them is Mitch Gorgas, whose brother, Hunter, is going to Rhode Island as a tight end. And then Tyler Castriotta, who played early for us as a sophomore and did a great job. He's another guy that's going to come in and play right away. And Chris Cassidy, whose older brother, TIm, played quarterback for us four years ago, three years ago.

So that's, fundamentally, a really important part of what we have coming back. And then you talk about the skill players, obviously you've got (receivers) Jay (Brunelle) and Eamonn (Dennis).

Eamonn's had a great summer. He's been offered at a couple of Division 1 programs: UMass, UConn, and I know Michigan is interested in him. I know Penn State is interested in him. Mississippi State is interested in him. So he's had a good summer. He's gotten bigger. He's the kind of guy we can play him in the slot. We can put him outside the numbers. We can put him in the backfield, and he can play some defense for us. And his explosiveness in the kicking game, that's what sort of set the table for him as a freshman. So he's going to be fun to watch this year.

Jay, I think, flat-out works his tail off like anybody we've ever had in the program. He's just so zeroed in on our strength and conditioning. He went to camps and he was an eye opener, the way he ran sub-4.6s. The three-cone drill, he just dominated it and the way he gets to the ball, it's just a testament to the way he approaches the game with his offseason preparation. He was a big-play guy for us last year, and if you look at where he started the season at Catholic Memorial, and then finished at Gillette and how far he came along as a sophomore, that was a big learning curve that he adjusted to quickly. So he's going to have a great year. And it's good to see him.

And then the guy that I'm really excited about is Colin Deso, who will play running back for us. We saw him a little bit toward the end of the season. We had Peter Oliver banged up and some guys, Danny Byers was in and out with a hamstring. But (Deso's) a lacrosse guy. He's going to play at UMass-Lowell. He's already committed. He committed there as a junior. And he's just a hard-running, athletic, tough kid. And if our offense is doing things the right way, and we can block people and get people spread out a little bit, he's a real threat to run the football. He's a real threat, and we've got some younger guys that are going to get in there and get reps, too. So we'll see how it pieces together, but it's going to be a fun group on offense.

MV: One thing I was sort of blown away by when watching you guys last year was how fast you were in your execution. When you lose a guy like Buccaglia, who can just do it himself, is it going to be more of a challenge to move as fast as you did last year?

JA: Well, I think, the way we practice and the way we prepare, it tends to slow the game down for guys. When you're calling everything on the line, when you get up and read the defense, and then you're really doing it on every rep in practice. There's obviously a learning curve there.

Steven was like having a coach on the field. He knew our offense so well. He was a film guy. He really studied the defensive schemes and what they were trying to disguise. He was excellent at throwing to the right guy. And that comes with experience. But he was in the same situation his junior year and was able to learn quickly.

MV: How about the defense?

JA: I think we're going to get a good look at these guys (during the scrimmages) and get the right people in the right places.

Our depth in the secondary, I think we've had the most depth in the secondary that we've had in a long time. There's five guys there, six guys there that can all play. And those guys are going to help us, particularly on with the type of teams we see.

But up front, Dom Imperato at defensive end had a great year last year, he's one of our captains. We've got some young guys in the front seven, but they all have good size and they're all physical, and I think they're going to match up well against the teams we're going to play this year.

MV: What do you think of Doherty (Memorial HS, another Div. 3 Central contender)?

JA: When you look at their skill players, they've got (running back/defensive back) Tajon (Vassar) coming back, who's just tremendous. He is a Division 1 player, no doubt about it. . . . He is just, he is an excellent football player. I think with the athletes they've got coming back at the skill positions, they have size; they're a tough team. We played them last year, obviously. It was a heck of a football game. They play physical. They play fast.