Manchester Central picks up key win over Merrimack (video)

MANCHESTER – There were two words the Manchester Central High School boys basketball team needed to remember Tuesday night while playing Merrimack.

Discipline and patience.

After not having much of either at the start, the Little Green adjusted both offensively and defensively to grab a 69-53 win over the Tomahawks in Division I action.

Jaylen LeRoy led the way, scoring 22 points, including four 3-pointers, two of which beat the buzzer at the end of the second and third quarters. Jon Makori also had 16 points for Central (10-3), despite battling foul trouble in the second half.

“Some of our possessions at the start of the game, I thought we shot it too quickly,” Central coach Doc Wheeler said. “They had great help defense, we take a crazy shot and it doesn’t go in. I thought as we got a little bit more patient and deliberate, we started to execute our offense better and the longer the defense has got to play, the better chance you have to break them down.

“We’ve got to be more disciplined defensively. We keep going for steals we can’t get, we reach too much, and the result is that good offensive players blow by us. We wanted to be more disciplined and keep Merrimack in front of us. Really, for about three quarters, we did a good job of it.”

Merrimack (9-4) was down 12 at halftime and managed to get within single digits a handful of times in the third quarter. But every time the Tomahawks did, Central had an answer at the other end.

“We competed all night,” Merrimack coach Tim Goodridge said. “We were down 12 at the half. We had the ball down seven and we could have cut it to five, something happened, they come down and hit a 3 and it’s a 10-point game. It’s deflating because you work hard against a team like that to get back into it. It just wasn’t our night.”

Zak Kerr led the Tomahawks with 15 points, 10 of which came in the second half, and Ian Roberts added 12 points.

The game was nearly four minutes in before either team scored, with Kerr giving Merrimack a 2-0 lead, and the Tomahawks were 4-2 when Central went on a 10-3 run to close out the quarter.

LeRoy had all but two of the Little Green’s 12 points in the first half, including two 3s, and Makori took over the scoring in the second quarter, netting nine points. LeRoy’s buzzer-beater 3 gave Central a 32-20 lead at halftime.

“They made some huge shots,” Goodridge said. “I thought we had the tempo where we wanted it, but when they shoot like that, it’s tough to beat. It’s a tough matchup for a lot of teams. They have three tremendous scorers and I thought overall, we did a good job on (Evan) MacDonald and LeRoy killed us all night long.”

Merrimack was able to battle back in the third, cutting the lead to 36-29 on a 3-pointer by Kerr. But a foul on the Tomahawks and a turnover helped Central score the next four points to go up 11.

Back-to-back baskets by Kerr again helped Merrimack get with in seven, 42-35, in the final minute of the third, but another buzzer-beater by LeRoy put Central up 45-35 going into the fourth.

The Little Green got two more 3s, one each from David Baraka and MacDonald, to go up 51-35 in the first 1:08 of the fourth, and the Tomahawks never got closer than 13 points the rest of the way.

“Our mentality sometimes is a little fragile, so when things go bad, we struggle with adversity,” Wheeler said. “For us, it was real big for us to have some good offensive possessions when they were starting to make a run. I told them, to me, this is the most important game we played all year.”