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# Bishop Guertin girls basketball found a way to win all season long
- URL: https://www.nh-highschoolsports.com/bishop-guertin-girls-basketball-found-a-way-to-win-all-season-long/
- Published: 2022-02-24T13:00:04.000Z
- Updated: 2022-02-24T13:00:04.000Z
- Description: This was a season that took time for the Bishop Guertin High School girls basketball team to figure out what worked best. So maybe then it was no surprise that it took the Cardinals to the final moments of Sunday's Division I championship game to pull out a victory. On paper, the team looked set, c
- Author: Joe Marchilena
- Tags: Division I, Bedford, Bishop Guertin, championship, girls basketball, NH High School Sports Insider, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-18 04:44

This was a season that took time for the Bishop Guertin High School girls basketball team to figure out what worked best.

So maybe then it was no surprise that it took the Cardinals to the final moments of Sunday's Division I championship game to pull out a victory.

On paper, the team looked set, coming off the program's fifth-straight appearance in a title game with a strong returning lineup and with the addition of a couple of younger players. But that didn't mean there weren't some holes in the roster and some roles that needed to be figured out.

"We had a first-team all-state kid (Meghan Stack) from last year still rehabbing a knee," Bishop Guertin coach Brad Kreick said. "We had a second-team all-state kid transfer out. We were mixing a freshman big in. It was a real challenge for us to just find out groove. It almost took us three-quarters of a season to figure out who we were."

Stack missed the entire season with her injury, while two players from the 2021 rotation transferred out before the school year. For the first time since the 2015-16 season, an in-state team other than Bedford handed the Cardinals a loss, as Pinkerton defeated Bishop Guertin for the first time in seven years during the regular season.

That loss, combined with another one 11 days after to Dracut (Mass.), helped Bishop Guertin discover what it needed to do to get back on the right path. The Cardinals figured it out in time to end the year winning seven in a row, including a 48-46 win over Bedford in the D1 title game.

"After the Dracut loss, the kids found themselves and they were really good down the stretch," Kreick said. "It’s not always the prettiest thing, but these kids are as tough a group as I’ve had. You saw that in spades in the last five minutes of that game. It would have been really easy, down whatever we were, six or seven, with all the momentum going against us. They just dug it out. That had nothing to do with coaching."

Sunday was far from pretty for either team, as they combined for 40 fouls, with four players - two a side - fouling out. Bedford had a big edge on the boards, outrebounding the Cardinals 46-29, and the Bulldogs were better from the field by almost 10 percent.

The biggest different came on defense, where Bishop Guertin forced Bedford into 30 turnovers, including 17 steals, seven by junior Brooke Paquette. The Cardinals scored 31 points off those turnovers, and late in the game, that was how they were able to swing momentum.

"We figured it out and I’m not even sure how the heck we did it," Kreick said. "We decided with about two-and-a-half minutes left that we were going to run and jump them a little bit. We hadn’t done that all year long, so I don’t know if it surprised them or things just started going fast. We got a few turnovers, which got us back into it.

"This is my seventh year doing this and every time we’ve been fortunate to win, it’s usually because we play 94 feet. Keep plugging away and they did."

Bishop Guertin had the lead for just 3:33 of the game and didn't go ahead for good until a 3-pointer by Paquette with under a minute to play. Being able to come back late for a championship victory made it feel a lot sweeter.

"It does, it really does," Paquette said. "We were down most of the game, even if it was just by a couple of points, but coming back and winning makes it that much sweeter. We played them in the first game and we knew there was a lot of growth between then. The environment here is great and I think that also played a role. It gave us a push."

And for Paquette and her classmates, it was a relief to final claim a title on the court. As freshmen, they were a part of the co-championship that was awarded when the remainder of the 2020 season was cancelled at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It’s the best feeling," she said. "Last year, we lost obviously (to Bedford), and the year before was the co-championship with Goffstown. I feel like this year, with the fans, the environment, we were able to come out with a real win."