Merrimack's Isaac Ynfante goes up for two against Bishop Guertin's Hudson Nichols during Thursday night's game in Merrimack. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

MERRIMACK – Their defenses tried hard to prevent it, but eventually a basketball game broke out between the Bishop Guertin and Merrimack High School boys basketball teams at the H. Dana Taylor Gymnasium on Thursday night.

And that was good news for the Cards, bad for the Tomahawks, as BG pulled away with a 62-39 win.

Both are now headed in different directions. The Cards won their sixth in a row, and are now 11-3 until they visit Trinity on Tuesday. Merrimack, meanwhile, has dropped three straight but get a chance to improve their 5-7 mark right away tonight at Concord.

It was just 22-16 BG midway through the third quarter, then something clicked as Guertin, scoreless for a stretch of 6:55, went on to outscore the ‘Hawks 40-23 the rest of the night.

Scoreless for just about seven minutes on the road usually finishes a team. So why did the Cards emerge alive and well?

“Because we dug in on defense,” BG coach John Fisher said. “I was pretty happy with the way we played defense tonight. On nights when we’re not hitting the buckets for a few minutes, let the defense pick it up a little bit. But the reason we didn’t score was Merrimack.”

But Merrimack didn’t score much either, and Guertin led 32-21 by the end of the third. When Guertin’s Hudson Nichols hit a 3-pointer with 7:11 left to play, BG was up 37-21 and never looked back.

The ‘Hawks, meanwhile, have scored just 70 combined points in their last two games, as Bedford held them to 31 on Tuesday.

“We were indecisive,” Merrimack coach Austin Denton said. “We were passing up little shots, and just didn’t do things we were doing at the beginning of the year. It’s frustrating right now.”

Guertin had just one scorer in double figures as Luke Anderson led all scorers with 17 points. Javari Ellison had nine. For Merrimack, Jackson Rosa had 15 points, and while seven others were in the scoring column, none had more than four points. Ouch.

“It was definitely and ugly game both sides,” Denton said. “Maybe both teams are pretty good at defense. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

But what he did know was his team was still in the game at halftime, down just nine (22-13) despite the offensive drought.

Bishop Guertin’s Matt Santosuosso drives to the hoop past Merrimack’s Luke Desfosses and Jackson Rosa (3) during Thursday night’s game at Merrimack. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

“They hit a couple big shots, that kind of put us down, really,” Denton said. “That was kind of the end of it. I told them at halftime, I said ‘Listen, we can still win the game. We can win it 26-22. We did a good job of it early on, but we weren’t scoring either.”

Fisher, again, is fine with Guertin using its play at one end of the court to fuel things at the other end.

“We’re a team where our defense helps our offense,” he said. “We’re pretty long, at least as long as most Division I teams. We have to use that to our advantage.”

They did last night as the Cards – and the game of basketball – finally prevailed.