Pinkerton girls basketball pulls away to beat Manchester Central (video)

MANCHESTER - It may have been the first game of the season, but Lani Buskey's prognostication skills were in midseason form.

Her Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team led Manchester Central by 12 points at halftime after holding the Little Green scoreless for more than four minutes to open the second quarter.

But despite the lead, Buskey told the Astros to be ready for Central to make a run to start the third quarter and have a way to answer it.

It took Pinkerton a while, as the Little Green opened the half with a 10-1 run to make it a three-point game, but the Astros went on a run of their own in the fourth quarter and picked up a 56-40 win over Central in the Division I opener for both teams Tuesday night.

"It’s December basketball," Buskey said. "I’ll take a win. I’ve got some young ones. I’m teaching them it’s a game of runs. I told them, (Central coach Mike Wenners) is a good coach, they’re going to come back at you, and they did. I said ‘how do we respond now? How does the team grow from this?’"

Pinkerton (1-0) got a response from two of its most experienced players, as Brooke Kane had 11 of her game-high 22 points in the fourth quarter - including two back-to-back 3-pointers that put the Astros up 19 points - and Madison Mahoney added 15 points, with three 3-pointers of her own.

Jesse Ames added six points for Pinkerton and did a lot of little things that helped Buskey remain confident as Central (0-1) was coming back in the third quarter.

"Jesse Ames is also a veteran and she’s going to get a lot of minutes," the coach said. "Second attempts and rebounds from Jesse was a deciding factor."

Central got 11 points from Emily Greenwood, including 7 of 10 shooting from the free throw line, while Hannah Autenrieth added nine points and Destiny Jordan hit two 3s and finished with seven points.

"We talk everyday about that if you go out there and play defense and rebound, put good effort in, good things happen," Wenners said. "We happened to play a team that is very, very good, against a player who is outstanding. We have to work as hard as we can for things and I can’t complain about the effort at all."

The game was tied at 8 late in the first quarter when Pinkerton started to create some separation, thanks in part to a 3-pointer at the buzzer by Megan King. That basket was part of a 14-1 run for the Astros, with another 3 by Kane making it 22-9 with 3:58 left until halftime.

Central was able to close the gap to 30-18 at halftime and a putback by Greenwood and a 3-pointer from Shae Rix cut Pinkerton's lead to eight points early in the second half.

The Astros hit a scoring drought of their own, going more than four minutes without a point, and a jumper by Autenrieth made it a 31-28 game with 3:37 remaining in the third.

"There are a lot of things, sets that we run on the offensive end, that we got away from," Wenners said. "Playing against a team that’s playing really good defense, it gets a lot harder. We just got back to some of the basic stuff we wanted to do."

A jumper by King and a three-point play by Kane got Pinkerton's lead back to eight points, and Mahoney hit a 3 with about a minute left in the quarter to make it 39-28. But Jordan answered at the other end to make it an eight-point game going into the fourth.

Another 3 by Mahoney put Pinkerton up 10 points, 42-32, with 6:10 to play and then Kane took over on offense for the Astros. The senior scored 11 straight points and Pinkerton went on a 14-3 run to put the game away.

"We definitely had our ups and downs throughout the whole game," Kane said. "When we got into a good flow and the ball was moving well, and we were rebounding well, that’s when we were getting separation."

Pinkerton will play its home opener next, as it hosts Concord on Friday at 6:30 p.m. Central is off until Dec. 18, when it will take on Trinity at home at 5 p.m. as part of a boys and girls varsity doubleheader.