Bedford girls basketball able to hold off Pinkerton to get win (video)

DERRY - With an eye toward getting more competitive games, the Bedford High School girls basketball team made some changes to its schedule this season.

Along with adding two out-of-state games, the Bulldogs also picked up a second game against Pinkerton Academy, and Monday night, they got the competition they were seeking.

Bedford needed to make two defensive stands late to keep Pinkerton from potentially tying or taking the lead and the Bulldogs made a couple of free throws late to secure a 48-43 win over the Astros in a Division I game at Pinkerton's Hackler Gymnasium.

Neither team led by more than five points all night and Pinkerton took the lead late in the third quarter before a run by Bedford put it back in front for good.

"We knew this was going to be a battle," Bedford coach Kevin Gibbs said. "They’re a tough team to play twice in one season, but we agreed to play a second time because we want to be better and be challenged for the postseason. That’s critical.

"I thought we made things hard on ourselves early. We missed a lot of easy shots, we missed a lot of shots that we probably made more difficult. We committed a lot of fouls. It’s important that the girls adjust their game to the way it’s being officiated. You tough it out. We made some good buckets and found our teammates at the right time. We made important buckets at important junctures of the game."

Three of those important baskets came from Kate Allard at the end of the third and early in the fourth quarter to help the Bulldogs (14-0 in D1) turn a 34-32 deficit into a 40-36 lead.

Allard finished with 17 points, including a pair of free throws in the final seconds to put the game out of reach, while Sarah Muir had eight of her 12 points in the first half and Eva Zink added nine points.

Sydney Gerossie led all scorers with 20 points, including three 3-pointers, but no one else was in double figures for the Astros (11-4). Kaylee Dupuis finished with seven points and Brooke Benz added six as Pinkerton was 15 of 18 at the free throw line.

"I’m really proud of them," Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey said. "We matched their physicality in a way that I didn’t know if my girls had. I didn’t know if they had that physicality, but after the first quarter, that was the first thing I said to them. You are matching their physicality and it’s making them uncomfortable. Bedford is usually the one making us uncomfortable, which we were. But the feeling was kind of mutual this game. We hung around."

It was Bedford's seventh-straight win against Pinkerton, which includes a 13-point win over the Astros in early January and a 19-point win in last year's D1 title game.

But on this night, the Astros gave the Bulldogs their closest game in the last two seasons.

Pinkerton outscored Bedford 9-2 over the end of the first quarter and into the second to go up 14-10, the Astros' largest lead of the night. A 3 by Gerossie made it 19-16 Pinkerton but after a Bedford timeout with 3:15 left in the half, the Bulldogs ended with a 7-1 run to lead 23-20 at the break.

Bedford took its largest lead, 29-24, early in the third quarter, but Pinkerton responded with a 10-4 run, taking a 34-32 lead on two free throws by Dupuis with 2:02 left in the quarter.

Back-to-back baskets by Zink and Allard put the Bulldogs in front 36-34 going into the fourth, and Bedford got the ball to Allard down low for two more baskets to start the final quarter.

"Kate got some big buckets for us," Gibbs said. "There were many times where they were really swarming the ball, and we were strong with it and found the open player underneath. We did a good job finding players when we needed to."

It looked like Bedford had enough of a cushion, but with 1:20 left, Pinkerton's Mia Marshall made two free throws to make it a two-point game. After a couple of fouls on the Astros put the Bulldogs in the bonus, Grace Wolf made one of two for Bedford to give it a 46-43 lead with 32.5 seconds left.

The Bulldogs took a timeout to set their defense, and after trying to find an open shot, the Astros called a timeout of their own with 12.3 seconds remaining. On the ensuing play, a shot by Taya Brown was off the mark Allard came down with the rebound before being fouled with 1.9 seconds left.

"We talked a lot about making the appropriate switches and jumping out on people when necessary," Gibb said of the defense. "The kids played really hard and we ended up with a couple of switches where we didn’t have the people on the people that we wanted, but the kids really stepped up and did a nice job, on that possession especially."