Thornton too much for Bedford in Chick-fil-A Tournament

NASHUA - The Thornton Academy boys basketball team will have a shot at a second-straight Chick-fil-A Holiday Tournament title after knocking off Bedford 63-45 Wednesday night at Nashua North.

Andrew Shaw, last year's tourney MVP, scored 26 points and James Ek added 13 points to help the Golden Trojans from Saco, Maine, advance to the final, where they will face Moore Catholic, which defeated Nashua South. The championship game is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday at North.

After scoring 32 points in the first-round game Tuesday, Shaw has 58 through two games and it was the seniors versatility that helped break open a close game in the second half.

In the first half, Thornton had Shaw, who hit five 3-pointers against Bedford, playing on the perimeter with the Bulldogs' James Caparell defending. But in the second half, Shaw moved into the post, where the 6-6 senior had an advantage over the 6-1 Caparell.

"He can score from four-point land," Bedford coach John Langlois said. "He’s just a great player and he’s a very tough matchup. They came out in the third period and post him up against our kid because he’s 6-6. We’ve got James playing him at 6-1. That was a tough matchup so I switched to a bigger kid playing him."

But having a bigger player guard Shaw opens things up for Thornton's other post players, according to coach Bob Davies.

"It’s a tough matchup," Davies said. "We have some size other than Andrew, so if they’re going to put a big guy on him, it allows us to post up other guys and get offensive rebounds. Most of the game, they guarded him with a guard, but we scored a couple of hoops in the second half with him on the block and they switched. That allowed some other guys to get some touches inside."

Those touches were hard to come by in the first half, as some quick shots by the Trojans led to fast-break points for Bedford. Back-to-back 3-pointers by Cameron Meservey, who finished with 13 points, put the Bulldogs up 24-15 with 5:38 left in the half.

"We have a lot of kids who can shoot the ball and they know that we’ve got a lot of freedom to shoot," Davies said. "We had taken some quick ones and they were scoring, so we had to make an adjustment and move the ball more and get it inside."

Thornton responded by going on a 16-6 run to close out the first half and take a 31-30 lead into the break. The Trojans outscored the Bulldogs 26-7 in the second quarter to go up by 20 and punch their ticket to the championship game.

Bedford will play for third place against Nashua South at 6 p.m. on Thursday.