Cardinals hold off Little Green to reach final
DURHAM – Connor Green scored 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead the Bishop Guertin High School boys basketball team to a 64-55 win over Manchester Central Tuesday in the Division I semifinals at the University of New Hampshire.
Green had 16 of his points in the second and Nick Pyzocha scored 16 of his 18 points in the first half as the top-seeded Cardinals advanced to the title game for the first time since 2002. Sean McClung was also in double figures for Bishop Guertin, adding 12 points.
No. 4 Central got 18 points and 10 boards from John Wickey and another 15 points from Audie Melendez.
Bishop Guertin (19-2) will face No. 2 Trinity, which defeated No. 11 Alvirne in the other semifinal, for the division title at 4 p.m. Saturday at UNH.
“Everybody tells me, we don’t have a point guard,” Bishop Guertin coach Jim Migneault said. “Well, watch us play, you can see we have a point guard. If (Pyzocha) isn’t a point guard … that’s a point guard.
“A lot of teams think that if we don’t score 70, we don’t win. We play decent defense even though we give up 50 points a game.”
Pyzocha added nine rebounds and five assists to go with his 18 points and the Cardinals forced 20 Central turnovers to hold their opponent under 60 points for the ninth straight game.
It was a 3 by Melendez that helped give Central one last chance, as he cut Bishop Guertin’s lead to 56-52 with 1:45 left in the game. The Cardinals came right back down the floor and got a layup from Pyzocha to make it a six-point game again.
But Central got another 3, this time from Gabe Lacount to make it 58-55 with 1:17 to play.
No problem for the Cardinals. Green put in a layup, and after a Central foul, McClung made two free throws to put Bishop Guertin up by seven. Green added two free throws of his own to close out the game.
“In the end, I think we had more legs and that made the difference,” Migneault said. “We just finished it out.”
The Cardinals turned a one-point halftime lead into an 11-point advantage in the third quarter by holding Central scoreless for nearly five minutes. But the Little Green returned the favor in the fourth, keeping the Cardinals off the scoreboard and closing the gap to one point with 3:35 to play before Bishop Guertin went on 7-1 run.
“We came out of the locker room ready to play,” Migneault said. “We’ve been doing that a lot this year. We come out of the locker room, we’ve gotten into their legs a little bit at the end of the second quarter and we go at teams. We do it the whole game and eventually, we get a couple of runs and we did in the third quarter.”
The Cardinals started out strong, taking an early lead on two jumpers by Green. Bishop Guertin led 13-4 with 2:24 left in the first quarter when Central started closing the gap.
A 3-pointer by Wickey cut the lead to six and started the Little Green on a 12-4 run that made it a one-point game before a layup by Pyzocha gave the Cardinals a 19-16 lead. Central tied it on a 3 by Melendez to open the second quarter and took its first lead a few moments later.
The teams traded baskets for the rest of the half. Bishop Guertin was able to take a five-point lead with 2:57 left in the half, but another 3 from Melendez and a putback by Troy Pelletier made it a one-point game in favor of the Cardinals at halftime.
Now Bishop Guertin will face Trinity with a chance to win its first boys basketball title since 1983. The Cardinals won in the regular season, beating the Pioneers 59-52 on Jan. 28.
