Nashua North's Madelyn Tino (24) goes to the hoop against Pinkerton's Taya Brown during Friday night's season opener in Nashua. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Basketball will always be a make or miss game, right?

And that was clearly evident on Friday night for the Nashua High School North girls basketball team, when its offense just couldn’t muster a sparked attack in a 56-37 season-opening loss at the hands of Pinkerton Academy at Titans Gym.

“It might have been our worst shooting night in history,” North coach Curt Dutilley said. “And there’s really only two returners (Madelyn Tino and Lily Small) who have played significant minutes. Everybody else is coming into their first workload.

“Technically, I thought we played well. But we couldn’t put the ball in the hole. … Opening night against a tough team, that’s perennially tough.”

The Astros led throughout, up 13-9 after one and 24-16 at the break and 35-26 North cut the margin to six, 35-29, on an Angie King 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, and kept the deficit to around eight until the Astros went on a 9-1 run capped by a Brooke Benz traditional three-point play with 3:29 to go. Game over.

It began to get tough for North when Astros coach Lani Buskey got another big, Cara Mann, into the game. “That was a deciding factor,” Buskey said. “We weren’t quite getting the rebounds and we controlled the rebounds in the second half, inside-out game.”

“We had to extend,” Dutilley said. “And once we extend, if they got over the top of us, the bigs are going to open it up inside, just opened those guys up for layups… And Brooke can score. She’s a great player.”

Benz had 18 points to lead all scorers and Tanya Brown added 15 for the Astros.. North was paced by Tino’s 15 points while Small had seven. But they just didn’t have the fluid offense the Astros were able to get going in the fourth quarter.

“This is a promising team,” Buskey said. “I’ve got Brooke Benz, I’m always going to feel like I’m in it when I’ve got Brooke Benz.”

Dutilley felt the first half was a key, that while the Titans operated well, “We could have drove way more to the basket in the first half. But this team is going to be based on high quality shooting. And we just had a crazy bad night. Maybe it’s just first night. We’ll find out.”