Windham girls basketball solidifies seeding with win over Nashua North (video)

NASHUA - It's the time of the season where basketball teams with championship aspirations figure out how to win no matter what.

The Windham High School girls team did that on Thursday night against Nashua North, overcoming a slow start and a spirited second-quarter run by the Titans to take a 61-38 win.

With the victory, the Jaguars (15-2) lock up the third seed in the up-coming Division I tournament, their highest since moving up to D1 for the 2018-19 season.

"The coaches and I talked in the offseason about the potential with this group," Windham coach Todd Steffinides said. "Their willingness to show up every day and work hard in practices, and have a great mindset for each opponent that we face, they’ve bought into that.

"We were a little flat to start. I was really proud with how we picked it up a couple of minutes into the ball game."

Meghan Husson hit four 3-pointers in the first half to finish with 12 points, nine of which came in the first four minutes of the game to keep Windham afloat. Gabriella Gullifa and Elizabeth Grasso both came off the bench to add 10 points apiece, as 10 players scored for the Jaguars.

"We talked as a team beforehand that we’ve got to go out and show who we are," Husson said. "We can’t underestimate any teams because you never know. We started with good energy and made the shots that we needed to make."

Early on, it was Husson making those shots, as her second 3 of the game gave Windham the lead for good and started a 19-0 run for the Jaguars that helped them take a 22-7 lead into the second quarter.

North (7-11), which held its senior night ceremony before the game, got back into the game in the first three minutes of the second. An 11-2 run, highlighted by 3s from Lily Small and Madelyn Tino, cut Windham's lead down to just six points.

But the Jaguars responded by going on a 12-2 run to end the half with a 36-20 lead.

"That second quarter, they made a run, they hit a couple of 3s on us, and they were starting to inch into the lead we had built," Steffinides said. "To see our girls stay with the process and pick up the intensity defensively, that was good for us."

Small finished with 12 points for the Titans and Tino added eight, as each hit a pair of 3-pointers, but the loss was the sixth in a row for North, which had battled a team-wide illness throughout the month of February.

"I thought we played hard," North coach Curt Dutilley said. "We went through, about five days ago, a 10-day flu with everyone. We can’t catch up. We don’t have our fitness yet and we’re not shooting well. There’s been practices we’ve had to cut to an hour or just call them."

With a playoff spot already locked up, Dutilley looked at games this week against the Jaguars, and Londonderry on Tuesday, as an opportunity to try to get back into game shape.

"We looked at it all week that we’ve got to use this as conditioning and sharpening up on our movements," the coach said. "Then we’ll get the shooting reps in and then prepare for the playoffs, that’s all we’ve got to do.

"We’ll be in, but who knows where we’ll end up. We finally got everybody to practice, we got everybody playing, and it will come back to us quickly."