Defense leads Merrimack boys basketball past Bedford (video)

MERRIMACK - Mark Elmendorf was a little worried about how his Bedford High School boys basketball team would do offensively Tuesday night against Merrimack.

Whatever his level of worry, the Bulldogs coach had no idea it would go the way it did.

Merrimack used 12-0 run the first half to break open a tie game and held Bedford to just two field goals in the second half on the way to a 51-26 win in Division I action. The Bulldogs had no one score in double figures and all their points in the fourth quarter came from the free throw line.

"I was really worried about the scoring (Tuesday), but I didn't think we'd come in here and score 26 points," Elmendorf said. "That's hard. They're very experienced and they're big, strong kids. We just couldn't get anything going."

The Tomahawks (2-0) led by as many as 31 points in the second half, and in two games this year, have allowed an average of 30.5 points. Take away a 19-point quarter against Spaulding last Friday, and Merrimack is allowing an average of six points per quarter.

"I thought we played really good team defense," Merrimack coach Tim Goodridge said. "That's what we have to play. That's what we're made of, we have a lot of hardcore, tough kids. The defensive intensity was there all night and I like the way the whole team was energetic."

Zak Kerr led the Tomahawks with 16 points, including two 3-pointers, while Ian Roberts had 10 of his 14 points in the second half. Ian Cummings also had nine points, all of which came in the first half.

Bedford (1-1) got seven points from Joshua Koehler and Colby Gendron added five points, while Ryan Hughes, who had 11 points in the season-opening win over Londonderry, was held scoreless against Merrimack.

"That Bedford team is pretty good and they beat a pretty Londonderry team," Goodridge said. "This was a big win for us."

It took a turn for the Tomahawks late in the first quarter, when Goodridge called a timeout after Bedford tied the game 6-6 with 3:25 remaining in the frame. Merrimack came out of the break and got two free throws from Kerr.

A Bedford turnover led to a layup by Cummings, and after Gendron missed two free throws, Kerr hit a 3-pointer and made a layup on back-to-back trips to make it 15-6 after one. After the Bulldogs missed a shot to open the second, Cummings hit a 3 to put Merrimack up 12, and by halftime, the lead had grown to 15 points.

"They run really good stuff and they go back door very well," Elmendorf said of Merrimack. "They come off screens very well. Their defense was good, but we just couldn't get in any flow. They were much more physical than us."

Merrimack opened the third quarter with a 6-0 run and started the fourth on an 8-0 run, taking a 51-20 lead on a basket by Noah Beygelman with 4:34 to play. Bedford would score the final six points of the game, all from the free throw line.

Although the Tomahawks didn't need the extra offense Tuesday, Goodridge believes it still needs to improve.

"Our goal is to get better offensively," he said. "When it came down to crunch time last year, as solid as we were defensively, when it came to the big moment, in those last four or five minutes, when we needed to score, we just couldn't. This team has to overcome that."