Merrimack girls basketball back in the win column with triumph over Pinkerton

DERRY - The Merrimack High School girls basketball team has had one of the toughest remaining schedules, if not the toughest, of any team in the Division I playoff hunt. The Tomahawks are in the midst of a final six-game stretch that pits them against five other playoff teams, including three teams that are either ahead of or directly behind them in the standings.

Friday was an opportunity to ensure Merrimack would close out that grueling final stretch with at least a .500 record, and it did just that with a 51-40 win over Pinkerton at Hackler Gymnasium. A composed third quarter and timely buckets from Theresa Twardosky (15 points) and Riley Crampton (14 points) paced a bounce-back win for the Tomahawks (15-2) following a tough loss to Manchester Memorial on Tuesday.

“They don’t pay attention to the score and really just grind every possession,” Merrimack coach Mike Soucy said. “They have such a will to win and compete. I tell everybody that it’s a group of ferocious competitors for 32 minutes. It’s been awesome.”

A seven-point edge at one point in the first quarter flipped to a one-point deficit by halftime for Merrimack before it stole the game for good in the third quarter. The Tomahawks began the second half on a 6-0 run by way of its own patience and inefficiency from Pinkerton (10-6), which was turning the ball over and producing one-and-done possessions.

“We’ve been working on making sure we get the right look every time down the floor,” Soucy said. “Sometimes kids get a little anxious, see a slight opening and want to take it instead of making the defense work. We ended up having them shift around, forcing them to guard more than one side of the floor before we looked to score.”

The empty possessions by the Astros were a product of both tough rolls and bad shots, but most of all, Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey watched her girls lose sight of their game plan in the third.

“No matter how many times I said they were playing into their tempo, they didn’t see it. I called two timeouts and they still didn’t see it,” Buskey said. “Once we started playing to their style is when they came away with it while we stopped doing the little things.”

The Astros were on the verge of creeping back into things on occasions late in the third and again in the fourth, but Twardosky had other plans. The senior drilled a half-court heave at the third-quarter buzzer to halt Pinkerton’s ideas of closing the gap and then did so again in the fourth with a three-point play to break a 6-1 run by the Astros.

Twardosky scored 10 of her points over the final eight-plus minutes of the game while Crampton generated nine of her points during the same span, including a second-chance 3-pointer to give Merrimack its first double-digit lead at 41-31 with six minutes to play.

Jesse Ames paced Pinkerton with 14 points while Avah Ingalls followed with 10.

Twardosky’s and-one conversion was the true nail in the coffin for Pinkerton, but Buskey admitted the half-court shot to end the third might’ve been the breaking point. Buskey revealed the Astros have fallen victim to a half-court make in each of the last three games now.

“I just wish karma would reward them a little more,” Buskey said. “I told them to go out and score three and that negates it, which they did and I tried to use that as a motivational push. But again, it’s a tempo game and (Merrimack) just wasn’t letting us play our game.”

Another win for Merrimack in Tuesday’s regular-season finale would lock them in for at least a third-place finish with potential to be higher with some help from other clubs. Either way, the improvement from being a .500 team and first-round playoff loser last season is rewarding enough for the Soucy and the Tomahawks.

“What’s a joy for me with all of this is this group of kids,” Soucy said. “They’re just fun to coach. When you have a group that works that hard every night, you don’t worry about much. We just tinker with a couple things in practice and then let them come out and play. For the most part, I really just get to kind of sit back here and watch them take care of things.”