Despite loss, Merrimack boys basketball heading in right direction

It's mid-February and the Merrimack High School boys basketball team lost to one of the top teams in Division I by double digits.

Tomahawks coach Tim Goodridge is in a hallway outside the gym, talking about how his team fought, how his players always fight, and as long as they've got that in them, they'll be just fine.

That happened Tuesday night after Merrimack fell 62-51 to Portsmouth, but it was also true almost a year early.

On Feb. 16, 2016, Goodridge watched his team fall to Manchester Central by more than a dozen points, and the Tomahawks proceeded to struggle down the stretch. They entered the postseason as the sixth seed, but came a tenth of a second from beating the same Little Green outfit in overtime of the D1 championship game.

Will history repeat itself? Hard to say, especially given the stretch Merrimack has to finish the season, which includes games at Winnacunnet, Keene and Dover, plus home games against Londonderry, Central and Manchester Memorial.

But Goodridge liks the direction his group is headed.

"We're 9-3 in the league and if you told me at the start of the year, that's where we'd be, I'd be very happy," the coach said on Tuesday. "We've still got a lot of work to do. We might not be the best basketball team, but this team has a lot of heart and you can't teach heart."

With junior Ian Cummings stepping into the role of go-to guy - he had 11 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter against Portsmouth - the Tomahawks have something last year's squad didn't. But experienced depth could be a big factor come playoff time, especially on the defensive end.

Against the Clippers, Merrimack was able to hold Cody Graham to 11 points - just enough for the junior to reach 1,000 for his career - but it struggled with Portsmouth's inside presence.

"I thought Joe (DeGregorio) did a really good job on the Graham kid," Goodridge said. "The Glynn kid really hurt us. He's a really good player. We started a freshman on him and he was a little overwhelmed to start with. Nothing against Jared (Dyer), he's a freshman and Glynn is a seasoned veteran who knows how to play the game.

Merrimack eventually moved Dan McKillop to Glynn, and at times, was able to slow the Portsmouth big man down. But every time the Tomahawks had a break down, the Clippers took advantage.

"McKillop is a scrapper and an animal," Goodridge said. "Danny does such a good job coming out and hedging those screens, but where we got hurt a lot is that Glynn can read that and he slipped them. There isn't anything Danny can do. The defense we were playing, we should have had backside help and I have no clue where that was. I'll watch the tape. We had a game plan defensively, and at times, we didn't execute it to our ability."

Despite that, Merrimack was within seven points late in the fourth quarter and the 11-point margin of victory was the second smallest for Portsmouth this season. Only Bishop Guertin, which lost to the Clippers by nine, was closer at the end.

At 9-3, the Tomahawks are tied with Winnacunnet for fourth in the division. The top three teams get a bye into the quarterfinals, and Merrimack holds the tiebreaker with Spaulding, the team currently in third.

"We'd like to get a home playoff game," Goodridge said. "I always like to say let's get to Durham and see what happens. We'd like to somehow figure out how to get there. I think we're capable of it. We're going to be a tough out for somebody."