SACO — The Thornton Academy girls basketball team held off a second half surge by the Noble Knights to win 40-31 on Wednesday night.

The Trojans would jump out to a 15-2 advantage in the first quarter and would take a 28-8 lead into halftime. However, the Knights would manage to pull within six points in the final two minutes of play to challenge TA.

“It was one of those games where we were playing not to lose instead of just playing our game, playing aggressively and playing to win,” said TA coach Eric Marston after the win. “We tried to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We tensed up a little bit, we weren’t as loose or relaxed as we were in the first half, we didn’t shoot it as well.”

Noble trailed 36-30 with just over a minute to play in the fourth. TA would send Alex Hart to the free throw line and she would convert on each shot to extend the lead to 38-30 with 57 seconds remaining.

Noble’s Amy Fleming would score on a free throw moments later, but the Trojans would hold off the Knights and Hart would add one last score at the buzzer to secure the win.

“Credit to (Noble). They played very hard, they played harder than we did in the second half. They were aggressive in the press, we turned it over a bit and they got some easy buckets which was what we were trying to limit,” said Marston of Noble’s late push.

TA jumped out to an early lead and controlled each side of the court. Amanda Bogardus would hit three 3-pointers in the first quarter and Hart added another in the second to help the Trojans take the commanding lead.

Noble freshman Tori Exel would score nine points in the third quarter to help cut the deficit to 15 points heading into the fourth. Fleming and Exel combined for all of Noble’s 12 points in the fourth quarter, although it was not enough to overcome the Trojan lead.

“That game could have gone the other way and I was proud of them for making the plays when they had to,” said Marston of his team’s performance down the stretch. “Again, we need to learn from what we did wrong late and what we did right early. We celebrate every win but we need to learn from the mistakes we made in the fourth quarter, we turned it over a million times.”

Hart led TA with 12 points while Bogardus added nine and Elise Hebert eight. Exel led the Knights with a game-high 15 points while Fleming added nine.

TA improves to 5-7 on the year while Noble drops to 1-10. Marston was pleased to see his team get back in the win column after dropping consecutive contests.

“It was good to get a win. We are in a tough part of the schedule here with some tough games coming up. We have had flashes but haven’t put up four quarters and to beat those teams you need to play for four quarters,” said Marston. “I think we have promise — if we play together, execute, the coaches put them in position to make plays, then I think we have a shot.”

— Associate Sports Editor Alex Sponseller can be reached at [email protected] or at 282-1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.