Merrimack boys basketball hangs on to beat Nashua South

MERRIMACK - Down 14 points early in the fourth quarter, the Nashua High School South boys basketball team did what it has all season.

But Tuesday night against Merrimack, it wasn't enough.

The Panthers went on a 15-2 to run to close the gap to one point with a little more than three minutes remaining, but the Tomahawks were able to execute when they needed to and held on to a 65-59 win that kept Merrimack (6-0) undefeated in Division I.

Eric Gendron led the way for the Tomahawks, scoring 16 points, including the 1,000th of his high school career in the second quarter. Shayne Bourque added 12 markers and Austin Franzen had nine, as both contributed key layups late in the game to help keep Merrimack ahead.

Despite almost losing a double-digit lead in the final quarter, Merrimack coach Tim Goodridge was pleased with how the Tomahawks were able to hang on to the win.

"That's what they do," Goodridge said of South's comeback. "That press is impressive. They've got a lot of quick guys and (Trevor) Knight is as quick as anything. I give my kids credit for breaking it.

"I think (Gendron) shared the ball really well and I think that's what made us a better basketball team. We got a lot of contributions from a lot of kids."

Yordy Tavarez led South (3-2) with 22 points, but only four of those came in the game's final 12 minutes. Mike Osgood added 11 points and Knight chipped in with nine.

The Panthers were down 55-41 with 6:07 left in the game when Tavarez hit a 3 to start South on a 15-2 that cut Merrimack's lead to 57-56 with 3:01 remaining. During that stretch, South was 9 of 10 from the free throw line.

"Right now, we're a team that plays on guts and guile and that's what got us back in the game," South coach Nate Mazerolle said. "(Merrimack) is a team that plays tough and executes very well. That was the difference. There were six or seven plays where they ran a need play, if you will, and it worked. In a tight game, you get that many sets that work, that could be the difference."

South jumped out to a 7-2 to start the game but the Tomahawks switched up their defense, going to a zone, to slow down the quicker Panthers. The switch worked and Merrimack took a 16-15 lead into the second quarter.

"It was to slow them all down," Goodridge said. "They were quicker than us. We started that first period and they were going by us like we were in quicksand."

The teams went back and forth over the first few possessions of the second, but a 10-3 run by Merrimack put the Tomahawks up seven with 2:32 to go until halftime. A jump shot by Gendron made it a 28-21 Merrimack lead and also put the senior over a thousand points, just the seventh boys basketball player in school history to reach the milestone.

The lead ballooned to eight, 33-25, on a 3-pointer by Mike Conlin with 1:10 left in the half, but South hung around. Osgood answered with a 3 and Tavarez was fouled on a 3 attempt with nine-tenths of second remaining and made all three free throws to cut Merrimack’s lead to 35-31 at halftime.

In the third, the Tomahawks tightened up on defense and South struggled to execute, scoring just eight points in the quarter. That included scoring just two points in the final five-plus minutes of the third.

Merrimack stretched the lead to 10 points at the end of the third quarter and went up 55-41 with 6:07 to play before South regrouped. But after getting to within one point, the Panthers couldn't execute on their end of the floor.

"There were three times where we were under the rim where we dropped the ball or missed a layup or got a jump ball," Mazerolle said. "They were three players where you think you're going to take the lead or make it a tie game, and then who knows what happens. But that's high school basketball."