East Hartford — The chance was there for Killingly to score, go ahead and seize the momentum to open the second half of Saturday’s CIAC Class MM championship football game.

Instead, things gradually began to unravel.

Killingly ran for a first down on its first drive to get to midfield but pushed back after being hit with a holding penalty.

An incompletion followed and Killingly was forced to punt.

North Haven proceeded to score 23 unanswered points and went on to win its first state championship, 51-34, at Rentschler Field.

“That set us back and the momentum changed,” Killingly head coach Chad Neal said. “If we could score to start the second half, maybe it’s a little different.”

The fifth-seeded Nighthawks (11-2) used their trademark single wing offense to run 49 times for 477 yards and seven touchdowns. They only threw once for an incompletion.

Jeff Karavas ran 17 times for 156 yards and two touchdowns for North Haven and Adam Pandolfi ran 13 times for 107 yards and two scores.

Brian Lastomirsky added six carries for 84 yards and two touchdowns for the Nighthawks and Trysten Dos scored on a 1-yard run.

Thomas Dreibholz completed 20 of 33 passes for 293 yards and four touchdowns for Killingly (11-2), last year’s Class M champion.

Noah Colangelo had nine catches for 148 yards and two touchdowns, Braden Pedersen had five catches for 83 yards and a score and Ben Perry caught a 6-yard touchdown pass.

North Haven got the ball at its own 32 to start its first possession of the second half and scored seven plays later on Pandolfi’s 5-yard run to go ahead, 28-21, with 6 minutes, 17 seconds left in the third quarter.

Killingly went for it on fourth-and-6 from the North Haven 40 on its next possession. The Nighthawks blitzed with Lastomirsky coming up the middle and Dreibholz threw an incompletion.

“Huge,” Nighthawks head coach Tony Sagnella said about that play. “It’s anybody’s game at that point. .... We had to make that stop and we came out on top. It helped us.”

Pandolfi scored on a 19-yard run to start the fourth quarter to give the Nighthawks a 35-21 lead.

Killingly was called for a hold on the first play of its next drive, followed by a bad snap for minus 14 yards to move the ball back to its 1.

North Haven’s Chayse Mangino was starting to tackle Dreibholz in the end zone on the next play and the Killingly QB was called for intentional grounding that resulted in a a safety and a 37-21 cushion.

Karavas’ 8-yard touchdown run extended the Nighthawks’ lead to 44-21 with 7:45 remaining.

“We just couldn’t stop them,” Neal said. “They’re a great football team and they were tough.”

Killingly’s senior class finished 24-2 over two seasons.

“Awesome,” Neal said about the season. “This whole playoffs, I thought our kids battled. We played three tremendous teams in Wethersfield, Masuk and North Haven today. We battled to the tail-end with all three. We asked our kids to play three teams like that and they did.

“I think (North Haven) would agree with you — we were able to hang with them at least for a while. We did what we could. We tried to win the game but the better team won the game today.”

n.griffen@theday.com