Nashua South's Rhett Medling goes up for two against Londonderry's Aidan Warren during Monday night's game at the Belanger Gym. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Both the Nashua High School South and Londonderry boys basketball teams learned a valuable lesson on Monday night at the Belanger Gym:

It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

For the Panthers, they learned it the hard way, jumping out to an 11-2 lead but ultimately bowing to the Lancers, 58-49.

“They adjusted, we got out of our flow offensively, out of our rhythm, and never got it back,” South coach Nate Mazerolle said.

The Panthers were running in transition, and scored early and often inside, as the Lancers seemed intimidated by 6-8 senior Rhett Medling, who finished with 13 points. But then South went smaller with its second unit, the Lancers (1-1) pressured, and got back in it. Londonderry trailed 15-13 after one, 29-29-27 at the half but then got the lead in the third quarter and never gave it up.

“It’s our first away game, we’ve got some new guys, coming off a tough loss (vs. Windham) Friday, we had to work out the kinks,” Lancers coach Nate Stanton said. “I love how they did it on their own. They kept battling, it’s a game of ups and downs as you know. But I loved the adversity and how we kept fighitng.”

“After that, we never got our momentum back,” Mazerolle said. “That’s partially what they did to us, but there were certain things that were breakdowns that we should have been able to get back to.”

The key moment was in the third quarter, when the Lancers, down 32-31, went on a 6-0 run, paced by layups by Aidan Warren and Tyler Murray, to grab the lead for good and they took a 39-35 advantage going into the final eight minutes. They basically turned it into a transition game, and some South turnovers aided that effort.

“That’s what I told them at halftime,” Stanton said. “I wanted them to get out and run. We really haven’t had much )(practice) time, but we’ve been working on our break and our defense. They simplified it, and we got the job done tonight.

Then, with the Panthers – they got a game-high 16 points from freshman Josh Caruso – trailing 44-38, Londondery went on another transition run and grabbed a 52-38 lead with 3:17 to play. Ball game.

“Bad shots and turnovers,” Mazerolle said. “We’re great when we’re running; that’s what got us the early lead. Then we put our head down a little bit when we got frustrated with certain things that weren’t working well, and that transition never got back.”

Murray had 11 along with Mason Paquette and Mike Rosatano, but Lancer Tyler Miles was effective inside with 12 points.

It’ll be touch and go with crunch of games, especially early on.

“Everyone’s learning on the fly, and so far, this group has been very good,” Mazerolle said. “It’s going to take a little while to gel.”

With lessons learned along the way, some of them harder than others.