Nashua North's Parth Miglani drives on Bedford's Thomas Braga during Friday night's game in Bedford. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

BEDFORD – They certainly left an impression.

That’s the silver lining for the Nashua High School North boys Titans in a hard-fought 81-76 boys basketball loss Friday night at the hands of the defending Division I champion Bedford Bulldogs.

“In a loss, that’s one helluva high school basketball game,” North coach Steve Lane said, his 4-2 team getting a 36-point effort from junior Parth Miglani. “Two teams that didn’t quit, and they’re very good. … But I think we proved ourselves a little bit tonight that we can hang with anybody if we want to play with effort and have the right attitudes.”

Bedford (5-0) looked like it had things wrapped up, up 69-58 with 3:54 left. But North’s pressure while the Bulldogs were trying to kill the clock and when Titan Alize Roig-Cortes hit a driving layup with 1:15 left, it was a 70-67 game.

“They’re tough to close out,” said Bedford coach Frank Moreno, who had his own hard-to-stop scorer in Luke Soden with 34 points. “We knew what we were in for coming into the game.

“I’d seen them on film so I knew they were going to pressure us. The hope is get them in foul trouble. We try to get downhill, get teams in foul trouble. We’ve won a couple of games at the line, fortunatelly we hit our free throws tonight.”

Yes, 8 of 9 in the fourth quarter from the line certainly helped. The Titans had started the game with a 7-2 run and led 18-15 after the opening quarter. Then things were tied at 34 at the half before Bedford led 55-52 at the end of three and a Soden trey to start the period helped the racehorse ‘Dogs launch a 14-6 run to seemingly take control.

A key in the game was the foul trouble of North big man Robinson Rodriguez, as he picked up his fourth with 3:37 left in the third quarter and fouled out with 3:34 left to play.

“We’ll have to learn,” Lane said. “He’ll have to learn if he wants to play in games that mean something like this, he’ll have to learn a little more discipline. We’re working on it.”

That gave Bulldog Austin Kasyjanski some room to do things inside, and he finished with 18 points. North got 10 from Jaden Pena and eight from Cortez, but some contributions off the bench by Peter Donovan and Tristan Jones.

The ‘Dogs were waiting for a game like this after basically blowing through the early part of the season. And they had to get the ball inbounded as it was still a one-score game with 2.8 seconds left.

“Oh yeah, it gives us that much more confidence,” Moreno said. “We had a couple of wins that were lopsided in a Christmas tournament last week. So you never know what type of team you really have until you get (to play) a team like this, right? It was a grind, and we knew it coming in.”

“They’re pretty deep, pretty solid,” Lane said of the ‘Dogs. “But I’m pretty sure we gave them a scare tonight.”

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