Gendron leads Merrimack boys basketball to comeback win over Bishop Guertin

NASHUA – If the Merrimack High School boys basketball team was going to turn things around, it was going to have to figure out what sport it was playing.

After a half that head coach Tim Goodridge thought looked more like football, the Tomahawks rebounded in the third quarter Friday night and raced past Bishop Guertin 63-54.

Eric Gendron scored 16 of his game-high 24 points in the second half as Merrimack outscored the Cardinals 25-5 to in the third quarter to erase a six-point deficit at halftime. Gendron finished with five 3-pointers, hitting four of Merrimack’s six 3s in the third.

“We were getting pushed around a little bit and we really had to play basketball,” Goodridge said of the first half. “We were playing more like football players than basketball, and in the second half, we were more like basketball players. Once we started playing basketball and started moving the ball, we played a lot better.”

Gendron was at the front of it for the ’Hawks (8-3 in Division I), but he got help from Shayne Bourque, who finished with 18 points, and Mitch Denton, who added nine, including two 3-pointers.

Bishop Guertin (8-3) got 22 points from Jeff Lunn and Kyle Gavin added 14 points, but the duo combined for just seven points – all from Lunn – in the second half.

“They were double- and triple-teaming on Jeff and kind of took him out of the game,” Bishop Guertin coach Jim Migneault said. “We didn’t run our offense in the third at all. A lot of people going one-on-one and that’s not us.”

The Cardinals looked more like themselves in the second quarter. Trailing 15-10 at the start of the quarter, Bishop Guertin went on a 9-2 run to take a 19-17 lead. A 3 by Denton put Merrimack back on top, but the Cardinals went on an 11-4 run and led 33-27 at halftime.

The teams combined for 19 turnovers and 21 fouls in the first half, and at the break, Goodridge felt his team needed to regain its focus.

“I thought the first half was fairly rough for both teams,” he said. “We had to keep our composure better. Some kids really stepped up and hit some big 3s. When they shoot them and they’re not going in, you’re yelling at them, but when they go in, you love them. We were loving them (Friday).”

It helped that Gendron was able to find the space to get into a groove.

“I wanted them to continue to contain Gendron, because we did a great job on him in the first half,” Migneault said. “Then he just got loose a couple of times at the beginning of the second half, and when he does that and he finds the range, the kid is good.”

Gendron hit a 3 to make it a two-point game, 34-32, two minutes into the second half, and then nailed back-to-back 3s to give Merrimack a 40-37 lead with 4:12 left in the quarter. The Cardinals took a timeout, but Bourque got an old-fashioned three-point play, and a free throw by Bishop Guertin’s Steven Toscano, Denton and Mike Conlin hit back-to-back 3s to make it 49-38.

Migneault took another timeout but Gendron hit a 3 at the buzzer to put the ’Hawks up 52-38 going to the third.

“They just spread it out on us in that third quarter,” Migneault said. “That’s two games in a row where we’ve come out of the locker room just not ready to go. That’s something we’ve got to work on.”

While the offense was clicking, Merrimack was clamping down on defense, allowing 21 points in the second half.

“We’re a pretty good defensive basketball team and that’s what we started preaching at the beginning of the year,” Goodridge said. “If we get good defensively, we can play with most teams and that was proven here (Friday). That’s a really good basketball team.”

Merrimack will face another good team on Tuesday when it hosts Trinity. Bishop Guertin is off until Friday, when it heads to Nashua South.