Hollis Brookline's Ana O'Donnell puts up a shot over Merrimack Valley's Aailiyah Tsao during Thurday night's game in Hollis. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

HOLLIS – They were loud, feeling proud.

Clearly the Hollis Brookline High School girls basketball team’s postgame reaction after beating Merrimack Valley 39-31 Thursday night showed this was no ordinary win.

“I’m so proud of these kids,” HB coach Heidi Moore said. “There’s a lot of joy here. This is what we’ve been striving for. All season, we started off 0-3. We said we need to step it up, and now look at us. We’re 13-4.”

And winners of nine in a row, with one regular season game left at defending champ and local rival Milford this Tuesday. But the other reason was this was benchmark win over a quality opponent, as the Pride rallied from down 29-22 to take a 31-30 lead on a jumper just inside the 3-point line by Lilly Jones (team high eight points) with 3:35 to play.

And they didn’t score again, with just six points all told in the fourth.

That’s because the Cavs trademark, their defense, took over, forcing a couple of turnovers and frustrating the Pride’s outside game.

“We had a hard time with their 1-2-2 zone, really had a hard time shooting the ball tonight and too many turnovers late,” MV coach Bob McNutt said, his team now 12-4. “Too many turnovers for us. … The zone really hampered us tonight…I praise them (HB), they played well, and battled back once we took the lead.”

Good teams have good players, and HB’s senior leader, Ana O’Donnell, took over down the stretch with eight points, seven in the last three minutes after Cavs center Mya Blackman’s put-back hoop gave HB the lead for good, 32-31, with three minutes to play.

“Honestly, I knew we had to keep pushing through it, through the ups and downs,” a winded O’Donnell said of the game’s intense stretch run. “We just had to take away their outside shots, and that was the game, obviously.”

It was a game of runs. MV looked like it would grab full control when a 10-0 second quarter run gave it a 14-5 lead. But lo and behold, the Cavs went on a 14-1 run of their own and went into the half up 23-19.

Hollis Brookline’s Brooke Bouchard grabs the ball away from MV’s Lauren Bailey, left, and Lila Gray during Tuesday night’s Division II clash. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

One key was six-foot junior Blackman, whose presence forced MV to think outside shots only down the stretch. She had at least four blocks,and has been averaging six during the season. Samantha Disco added 12 points, “and Kendall Dunn and Blackman controlled the boards all night,” Moore noted. “Mya Blackman is probably the best defender in the state in terms of blocks. We need her. … Soccer’s (keeper) her sport, but she needs to think more about basketball.”

“All of us are multi-sport athletes,” O’Donnell said. “We’re catching up to how we were last season and getting even better than we were before.”

In the background came more cheers.

“We wanted a home (tourney) game,” Moore said. “When I took over, I said to the girls, and I said it as a long term goal, we’re gonna get there Ana’s senior year. We’re slowly getting there.

“I don’t have basketball players, maybe one or two,” Moore said. “I have athletes who know how to play basketball.”

And they know how to win, as the last month has shown. Now the Cavs want to make even more noise in March.