It didn't look good early on, but Nashua South senior point guard Zac Castonguay was finally able to smile Wednesday night in the waning moments of the Panthers' 76-61 prelim win over Portsmouth at the Belanger Gym. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – The season – and his high school career — weren’t going to end on the Belanger Gym floor on Wednesday, not if Nashua High School South boys basketball point guard Zac Castonguay had anything to say about it.

“Oh no, I wasn’t going to let that happen,” he said after the No. 8 Panthers ralled from a first-half 15-point deficit to pull away from No. 9 Portsmouth, 76-61 in the Division I preliminary round. “They called a timeout in the third quarter and I screamed, ‘I’m not going out like this.’ I brought the intensity. I was crazy. Last game here.”

Castonguay had six points in the second, eight in the third as part of his 20-point effort, while his backcourt mate, junior Josh Caruso, finished with 27, including 13 in the decisive final quarter. But a key was his buzzer-beating 3-pointer to end the third, giving the 12-7 Panthers a 49-44 lead.

“I had a slow third quarter, I think that was my only basket then, just trying to turn the momentum around,” Caruso said. “But after that, even after the run in the second quarter, we knew the game was ours. We weren’t going out on this floor.”

Now the Panthers will be up bright and early on Saturday as they head to face No. 1, 17-1 Pinkerton Academy in Derry for a noon quarterfinal. But they’ll have time to savor this one first, even though it looked like it might be a game to forget the way the Clippers (9-10) led 16-8 after one quarter and 24-9 midway through the second quarter. They dominated the offensive glass, 16 offensive rebounds in the first half.

“You can prep kids all you want, tournament atmosphere is a little bit different,” South coach Nate Mazerolle said. “They (Portsmouth) came out and they played very well, a very good game plan, and we knew they crash the glass. Sometimes basketball is so simple: Get an offensive rebound and make a lauyup. They were killing us with that. And they were defending Josh in the first half extremely well. … Thankfully we can outscore people.”

“When you have a guy like Caruso, a guy like Castonguay, they’re just really, really good players,” Portsmouth coach Tyrece Gibbs said, his team led by “And they can get it back in a hurry. And I think that was visible in the second half.”

Nashua South’s Josh Caruso goes up for two against Portsmouth’s Princeton Daniel during the fourth quarter of Wednesday night’s Division I prelim at the Belanger Gym. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

The other key was South’s defense, which finally came alive in the second quarter as the Panthers ended the half with an 18-5 run to trail only 29-27.

“Samson Akotey in the second quarter changed things with his defense,” Mazerolle said of the long-armed, 6-1 junior who came off the bench.

The Clippers got to the line thanks to their rebounding early in the third quarter to take a 34-29 lead, but the game was tied at 43 before a 6-1 run keyed by Caruso’s long distance late trey give South its five-point lead heading into the final eight minutes. Before long, an 8-3 Panther start keyed by the two guards made it a 59-47 game. It was pretty much over. Josh Tripp added 12 points for the winners, most of them at key times.

No matter what, that was Castonguay’ final game on that floor with his good backcourt scoring friend. “It’s a little bit sad,” he said. “Still pumped up that we got the win, though.”

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