Merrimack's Kaylee Bormuth hits the floor with reckless abandon to wrestle a loose ball away from a slew of Windham High players. The Tomahawks fell to the Jaguars on Friday night in the Division 1 playoffs, 45-30.

MERRIMACK – The size of the fight in the dog matters often in sports. Friday night’s Division 1 girls basketball sectional semifinal was clearly not one of those occasions.

Merrimack High School scratched and clawed as best as it could, but the Tomahawks were outsized and ultimately ousted by Windham High School, 45-30, to end their season.

Windham’s frontcourt tandem of Sarah Dempsey and Bree Amari combined for 22 points and 26 rebounds, owning the backboards on both ends as the Jaguars, now 9-4, moved to Sunday’s regional final against Londonderry, a 35-28 winner over Salem in the other sectional semi.

“They’re a good team. The Dempsey girl is a good player,” said first-year Merrimack coach Bryan Duggan. “Offensively she’s solid, and she’s so strong on the boards. They crushed us on the boards. We’re not a big team, and they’re tough.”

The playoff atmosphere, complete with parents from both schools in the stands, clearly got to the younger, less experienced Tomahawks.

“As soon as you put tournament in front of a game, obviously the nerves, they get a little tighter,” said Duggan, whose club had split the two regular-season meetings with Windham, each team winning on its home floor.

“That’s what we talked about. For us, offensively it was not a good night. There were some nerves and some struggles.”

The jitters showed early in both halves. Merrimack went scoreless for 5:50 to open the game and another 4:20 coming out of the intermission.

“That’s how we kind of started out. And we allowed the offensive struggles to carry over on defense,” said Duggan. “That’s kind of our bread-and-butter this year, to defend and get out and break. The shots not only affected us that way, but they affected us defensively. We kind of had our heads down.”

Windham capitalized, building a quick 6-0 lead that bloomed into a 26-13 halftime margin.

Threatened with their season, the Tomahawks played fiercely from the start of the second, but while the defensive effort yielded turnovers and opportunity, baskets were extremely hard to come by.

A couple times there were glimmers of hope.

Five straight points from junior Emma Valuzzi and then a nifty Valuzzi-to-Kaylee Bormuth backdoor connection sliced the margin to nine at 30-21 with 1:24 left in the third.

Then in the fourth, a Gillian Waller free throw would make it 36-26.

Offense was just too tough for Merrimack to come by.

“The third and fourth quarter, that’s who we are all year. It’s who we’ve been. We’ve got a chip on our shoulder and played hard,” said Duggan.

“We regrouped in the third, had it back to nine and fought. It’s just so hard to come back against a good team like that.”

Valuzzi and Lilli Dabilis would finish the night with eight points to pace Merrimack. Waller and senior Keira Bike added five and Bormuth had four.

“I look at this team that had barely any girls that played last year. For the year we went through, I’m super proud of them,” said Duggan. “They worked really hard for me. I’m very happy. Unfortunately, on offense it just wasn’t there tonight.”

Merrimack finishes at 7-8 and now bids adieu to four valuable seniors – Bike, Dabilis, Waller and Olivia Cote.

“The seniors, my first year walking in, they’re just great, great kids outside of basketball. That’s what we want,” said Duggan. “Keira has an opportunity to play at Plymouth State next year. The coach asked her to play. Gill is heck of a scorer. Lilli plays hard, gives us what you want and Olivia gives us that energy off the bench.

“I’m going to miss them. Only one year with them, but like I said this team really meant a lot to me. I’m going to miss those girls.”

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