Bishop Guertin holds off Manchester Central to win basketball opener

MANCHESTER – Joe McCarthy scored a game-high 31 points, including two 3s late in the fourth quarter, and the Bishop Guertin High School boys basketball team defeated Manchester Central 79-69 Friday night in the Division I opener for both teams.

McCarthy’s 3 with 2:47 to play in the game turned a 63-61 lead into a five-point advantage, and the senior hit another bomb a little more than a minute later to cap an 8-0 run by the Cardinals that put them up by 10 points with 1:24 to play.

Bishop Guertin had led by as many as 14 points earlier in the second half, but after Central made a run McCarthy and company responded.

“We’ve been playing together a lot in the offseason,” Bishop Guertin coach Jim Migneault said. “We’ve been behind before. We know we can keep running at you because of the way we play defense. That will keep you in games. When they made a run, we kept our composure. Joe hit a couple of huge 3s.”

Logan Kesty added 17 points for the Cardinals (1-0) while Cooper Paul chipped in with 11 markers and Jeff Lunn added nine.

Central (0-1) got 20 points from Christian Artiga and another 19 from Tray Pelletier. Gabe LaCount added 12 points and Dawson Dickson had nine.

But offense wasn’t the problem for the Little Green.

“I thought we’d be better defensively,” Central coach Doc Wheeler said. “When we made one mistake, we turned it into two a lot. We kind of sulked. Bishop Guertin does a great job going on their fast breaks. You compare a team with three returning players to one that the whole team has played together.”

Although the Cardinals graduated all five starters from last year’s Division I championship team, they have several returning seniors who got plenty of minutes a year ago. It certainly helped on the defensive end and it helped the Cardinals stay focused in the face of Central’s run, but it didn’t help with shot selection.

“There were times when we played not too smart,” Migneault said. “(Shot selection) was terrible. When we had the lead, there were shots that we didn’t need to take that we took. I think that’s going to be part of maturing. The kids didn’t play as many minutes last year that are playing those big-time minutes this year.”

Central took the lead late in the first quarter and went up 29-21 with 3:36 to play in the first half. But from there, the Cardinals took over the game.

Bishop Guertin ended the half on a 12-3 run, taking a 33-32 lead into the locker room, and then carried it over into the second half. A layup by Paul with 3:02 left in the third gave the Cardinals a 49-35 lead, and completed an eight-minute stretch in which Bishop Guertin outscored Central 28-6.

“We had been behind the whole time and we took the lead in at halftime,” Migneault said. “It was nice. The way we did it was with defense. You come in up (one) instead of down four. We made a nice run in the third quarter. Fourth quarter, we held our own.”

Wheeler was encouraged by what he saw from the Little Green, but there is plenty Central still has to work on, and Bishop Guertin made it a little easier for the coach to point this things out.

“Bishop Guertin does us a great service to expose the areas we need to work on,” Wheeler said. “The guys are really going to listen after a loss. Sometimes after you win, things are great and you don’t really focus on the areas of weakness. They allowed us to focus on our areas of weakness.”