Nashua South's Daniel Karavanic tries to stop Alvirne's Garrett Hall (10) during Tuesday night's game in Hudson. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

HUDSON – Bumps. Bruises. Grind. Noise. Lots of noise. Floor burns.

Those are the things the Nashua High School boys basketball team is starting to get used to this season, and they adjusted to it well down the stretch in a 55-45 win over Alvirne at an absolutely packed Steckevicz Gym Tuesday night.

“We lost a game similar to this the other night (vs. Keene),” Panthers coach Nate Mazerolle said. “We made our free throws tonight. That’s a big difference.

“A loud, great atmosphere, intense, feels like it’s a million degrees in here. I told them it’ll be a toughness win, and it was.”

Indeed, the game was tied at 45 on an Alvirne’s Garrett Hall putback after the scrappy Broncos rallied from a 10 point deficit with 1:29 to play. But the Panthers (4-1) kept it from being a thriller as they took the lead for good on a Daniel Karavanic hoop with 1:10 to play and closed it out with eight straight free throws for a 10-0 game ending run. Overall they sank 19 of 23 from the line.

“We did a lot of things wrong early in the game to get ourselves into a hole,” Alvirne coach Mitchell Roy said. “We fought like heck to get back in it. We ran out of gas. … We’ll learn from it, we’ll be back. We just need to score the ball. We defended our butts off.”

The Broncos (3-2) sure did, but that was to be expected after they held a high octane Pinkerton team to 37 last Friday. Their harassing, physical style held top Panther scorer Josh Caruso to 18 points a few days after he had pumped in 41 vs. Keene. But as Mazerolle said, free throws was the difference, and Carsuo made 14 of 15, including six straight down the stretch. Karavanic added 12 points and Shane Lemire added 10 for South.

“He can’t have 35 every night, especially when they’re double-teaming him, hacking him,” Mazerolle said. “Shane Lemire had a nice stretch when he couldn’t miss. In a game like this, you make two or three shots in a row, that’s row.”

The Broncos were led by Hall’s 16 and 12 by Sammy DeWitt. But they were the only two scorers for Alvirne in the final period. South led 24-20 at the half and 35-33 after three, then an 8-0 run to start the fourth quarter got them up 43-33 with 6:23 left before DeWitt and Hall led a comeback.

“We need to score the ball,” Roy said, “and that’s on the coach to figure it out.”

They get another crack at it at Portsmouth on Friday, and after Bishop Guertin upset Trinity last night, the Clippers are now Division I’s only unbeaten team. Roy wants his team to get used to the kind of big-game, loud atmosphere that existed last night.

“It’s what you want,” he said. “We’ve got to learn to embrace that moment a little bit. We came out tight in it, these guys haven’t played in a ton of big games. We’re going to get there.”

SPECIAL TIME FOR SOUTH-TRINITY

Trinity is at Nashua South on Friday but it won’t be the usual 6:30 start. It will be at 5:30 p.m. so the Belanger Gym can be set up for the Nashua Hall of Fame Wrestling Tournament slated for Saturday morning.