WILLIAMSTOWN — In Little Three football, getting a win can be all about weathering a storm.

Three plays into Saturday’s Amherst-Williams game, the Mammoths found themselves down by one touchdown. Five minutes into the first quarter, they were down by two touchdowns.

Coach E.J. Mills’ squad righted the ship and only trailed at halftime by eight points. That was the good news.

Williams held Amherst without a point in the second half, to only three first downs and 56 yards in total offense, as the Ephs routed the Mammoths 31-9..

“No, not at all,” said Mills, when asked if he could have imagined being down 14 in the first quarter “You have to give those guys credit. They played great. They’re a good football team. You can’t spot people that. You can’t play that way.

“We had trouble finishing games this year. We fought a little bit in the second quarter, but they controlled the football and it wasn’t much of a football game.”

The win was the most one-sided for a Williams team since the Ephs beat Amherst 37-7 in Amherst in 2006. Williams has now won two of the last three from its Little Three rivals, after having lost the previous six games. Williams finishes with a 7-2 record, while Amherst finishes 4-5. It’s the first losing season in Mills’ 23 years as Amherst’s head coach.

For Williams’ 12 seniors, it was an opportunity to not only take one final walk up Spring Street, but to finish with a winning record. As first-years, this group of seniors were 0-8, that coming in coach Mark Raymond’s first season. Since then, they are 18-9 for a 18-17 record.

It was a day where Williams dominated in all facets of the game. The Ephs ran 68 offensive plays for 470 yards to Amherst’s 48 plays for 196 yards. The time of possession for Williams was 38 minutes, 6 seconds to 21:54 for the Mammoths.

One of the most telling stats came in rushing. Williams had 53 running plays for 345 net yards compared to 59 yards on 24 carries for Amherst. In 53 running plays, Williams managed only four plays without positive yardage. The Eph backs had zero negative yardage plays in the game.

More than half of the Williams ground game was credited to first-year Joel Nicholas. Nicholas ran for a career-high 211 yards on 24 carries. He scored three touchdowns: A 6-yard run in the first quarter, a 10-yard run in the third quarter and a 23-yard run in the fourth.

But it was a two-play series in the third quarter that locked up the victory for Williams.

The Ephs scored the first 17 points of the game, and led 17-9 at the break. The Mammoths had scored with 16 seconds left in the second quarter on a 3-yard pass from Ollie Eberth to James O’Regan. It was 17-9 because kicker Henry Atkeson pushed the kick just wide right.

“These games are never over. I didn’t have to say much” at halftime, Raymond said. “We have great leadership. Those kids got things going. The assistant coaches did a great job of making a few tweaks. With the captains we had, we didn’t need to say much.”

Williams had won the toss and elected to defer. The Ephs took over on their 28, but faced fourth-and-1 link of the chain after Dan Vaughn (17 carries, 81 yards) was stopped just shy of the first down. On fourth down, Nicholas bounced outside and rumbled 53 yards to the Amherst 10. The left side of the Eph line, tackle Terry Zapf and guard Patrick Watson, blew open a huge hole and Nicholas was kept out of the end zone by John Ballard’s tackle. It didn’t matter, because on the next play, Nicholas went the final 10 yards for a touchdown. Min Kyu Park’s point-after made it 24-9.

“We gave up a big play on third down on that first drive in the second half, and that obviously hurt,” Mills said. “To give up a score right there really hurt us.”

It was, however, a wire-to-wire win for Williams, the first one since a 20-0 shutout here back in 2007.

Williams got its scoring started before most of the tailgaters left their cars to get into the stadium.

On the fourth play of the game’s opening drive, Eberth tried to hit wide receiver Daniel Dolan. Eph defensive back Drew Michalek deflected the pass right into the arms of Anthony, who took it 32 yards for the score.