Third-quarter swing lifts Bishop Guertin girls basketball to win over Pinkerton
NASHUA – The Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team knew what was coming at the start of the second half of Thursday night’s game against Bishop Guertin.
A 6-0 run to end the first half had given the Astros a two-point lead going into the break, and they knew before play resumed, that the Cardinals were going to counter with everything they could.
Bishop Guertin did just that, retaking the lead in just 27 seconds on the way to outscoring Pinkerton 27-2 in the third, as the Cardinals dominated the second half in a 65-32 win over the Astros in a Division I game.
Erin Carney led the Cardinals (8-0) with 21 points, leaving the senior six points away from a thousand in her high school career, while Brianna Wilcox added 15 points, including three 3-pointers, and Addison Smith had 11 points. Bishop Guertin opened the second half with a 13-0 run to take a 36-25 lead, thanks largely to its full-court pressure.
“We didn’t run any different presses, I just think they just did things in the second half in all phases of the game with a little more intensity than they did in the first half,” Bishop Guertin coach Brad Kreick said. “That makes a big difference. They responded to the challenge. They came out in the second half, really buckled down, and I thought, showed a lot of pride.”
After turning the ball over just five times in the first half, Pinkerton (6-2) had that many giveaways in the first three minutes of the second half.
“I think we just didn’t handle it as well,” Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey said. “We went back to some habits we had been talking about fixing. The first half, we fixed them, the second half, we reverted back. BG’s pressure, it asks you to mess up. It welcomes you to mess up. We fell victim to that. You give them an inch and they’re going to take a mile.”
The Astros got a big game from Allison Ingalls, who came off the bench to score 11 points in the first half, while Sofia Riccio added eight points and Avah Ingalls had six. Pinkerton shot just 4 of 12 from the free throw line, and after a basket by Alyssa DiMauro made it a nine-point game with 4:15 left in the third, the Astros went more than eight minutes without scoring.
Bishop Guertin opened the game fast, going up 9-2 midway through the first quarter, but Pinkerton responded, tying it at 12 before a buzzer-beating jumper by Molly Smith gave the Cardinals a 14-12 lead at the end of one.
The Astros kept it close, tying the score twice early in the second quarter, but each time, Wilcox hit a 3 at the other end to keep Bishop Guertin in front.
The Cardinals led 23-19 with two minutes left in the half, but a free throw and a 3 by Allison Ingalls tied the game with a little more than a minute left, and a basket in the final seconds by Jesse Ames put Pinkerton up 25-23.
“I thought they were tenacious and I thought they showed in that moment that they can hang with most teams,” Buskey said. “We warned each other at halftime, that they’re going to come out guns blazing and they just did. We couldn’t withstand the storm.”
Hannah Muchemore scored to tie the game on Bishop Guertin’s first possession and the Cardinals’ press forced a turnover, leading to a basket by Carney to make it 27-25. Another Pinkerton turnover led to a 3 by Wilcox and putbacks by Addison Smith and Meghan Stack made it 34-25.
“We didn’t defend real well,” Kreick said of the first half. “We don’t give up 25 (points) in a half here all that much, and we were just getting bullied a little bit. Almost all of their points were in the paint and we were just not competing like we usually do. Offensively, we were content to just jack 3s.
“We got that cleaned up at halftime, told them they had to defend first and run the floor second. The offense, if they stayed in an attacking mode, would take care of itself.”
Things went from bad to worse for the Astros in the final minute of the third quarter, when sophomore Casey Ames went down with what appeared to be a knee injury on a non-contact play.
“Casey (Ames) goes down and the emotions are gone,” Buskey said. “It was running away from us at that point, but then it’s hard to get the emotions back. The character my girls showed and the class my girls showed, they were good sports, and in my book, that’s more important. We’ll take the lessons and move forward.”
