Merrimack boys basketball slows down Manchester Memorial in D1 semifinals (video)

DURHAM – Comfort was not a thing to be enjoyed Tuesday night by the Merrimack High School boys basketball team.

Not when the Tomhawks had seen Manchester Memorial, their Division I semifinal opponent, pull of two epic second-half comebacks in the first two rounds of the tournament. Not when they knew the Crusaders were capable of exploding on offense at any given moment.

Instead, No. 5 Merrimack continued to do what it does best – play steady defense, be patient on offense and do its best to control the boards. The Tomahawks did enough of each to hold No. 9 Memorial to just 13 points in the second half on the way to a 49-41 win over the Crusaders at the University of New Hampshire’s Lundholm Gym.

The win sends Merrimack to the final for the third time in five years, where it will once again face No. 3 Manchester Central, its opponent in its last three championship games (2006, 2012, 2014).

“The keys for us were win turnovers, be patient on offense and rebound the ball,” Merrimack coach Tim Goodridge said. “We’re not going to run up and down with that team. If we get the game going in the 80s, we don’t win. If we keep in the 50s, maybe 60s, we win. I thought our kids did remarkable job.”

Merrimack didn’t win the turnover battle (13-11), but the Tomahawks outrebounded Memorial 38-29, including 29-8 on the Crusaders’ glass.

Ian Roberts led Merrimack (15-6) with 13 points and grabbed five rebounds while Ian Cummings had a double double, scoring 12 points and getting 12 boards, 11 of which came on the defensive end. Zak Kerr and Dan McKillop each had eight points.

“We played great defense and ended up controlling the game and went from there,” Cummings said. “We’ve been doing a lot of boxing out drills in practice and everybody is getting good at rebounding. We just boxed out and do what we had to do.”

Paul Rodolf led all scorers with 14 points and also had seven steals for Memorial (13-8), which rallied from 22 points down to beat Nashua South in the first round, and five points down with a minute to play against Nashua North in the quarterfinals.

Nick Philibert was also in double figures for the Crusaders with 10 points and Malo Roumraj had six points and 12 rebounds.

Memorial had control of the game early, getting out to a 11-2 lead in the first four-plus minutes of the opening quarter. But Merrimack started chipping away after that and close the quarter on a 9-2 run, finished off by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Cummings, to make it a 13-11 game.

The run continued into the second quarter and Merrimack took its first lead, 16-15, on a layup by McKillop with 4:51 left in the first half. The Crusaders answered with a run of their own, going on a 9-0 run to go back up by seven, 24-17.

The Tomahawks countered, outscoring Memorial 10-4 over the rest of the half, including another buzzer beater, this time on a putback by Jake Giannelli, to trail 28-27 going into the break.

After Memorial shot 57.9 percent from the field in the first half, Merrimack was able to slow the game down, force the Crusaders into tough shots and limit them to one opportunity on offense in the second half.

“I thought we rebounded the (heck) out of the ball on the defensive end,” Goodridge said. “I watched tape on them, and they’re getting two or three shots. We did a really good job on the defensive boards.”

The teams battled back and forth in the third quarter, with the lead changing hands five times. Memorial went up 33-32 on a steal and layup bu Rodolf, but Merrimack responded with a 6-0 run to go up 38-33, its largest lead of the game to that point.

But Cummings picked up his third foul soon after that and was on the bench for the rest of the quarter, as Memorial cut the lead to two, getting a buzzer beater from Rodolf to make it 38-36 going into the fourth.

Memorial tied the game on its first possession of the fourth, but then went more than 5:30 without a point, missing six straight shots from the field and two free throws during that stretch. Merrimack took advantage, going up 45-38, as the Tomahawks held the Crusaders to 17.9 percent from the field in the second half.

“I would have hoped we would, but expect it, no,” Goodridge said. “Our kids worked hard on defense and we’re proud of that. I think we did a great job. You get up here on the big floor, and you’ve got to defend, and I thought we did a great job defending (Tuesday).”

That great job gets Merrimack the opportunity to try to do it again Saturday at 12 p.m. against Central.