Bishop Guertin rallies in fourth quarter to beat Bedford in D1 girls basketball final (video)

DURHAM - There came a point in the second half of Sunday's Division I girls basketball final where Brad Kreick started to doubt what he'd been saying to the Bishop Guertin High School team.

The Cardinals trailed Bedford for all of the first three quarters and were looking at a 10-point deficit heading into the fourth. Fortunately, for Kreick and Bishop Guertin, there was someone who knew it wasn't over: Brooke Paquette.

The senior scored 11 straight points for the Cardinals to start the fourth quarter, and the defense clamped down on the Bulldogs, holding them to just two field goals in the frame. That allowed No. 1 Bishop Guertin to storm back for a 51-45 win over No. 3 Bedford at the University of New Hampshire's Lundholm Gym.

The win gives the Cardinals (21-0) back-to-back D1 titles and is the program's eighth title since 2012. Bishop Guertin also came back late to beat Bedford in last year's championship game after the Bulldogs won the title over the Cardinals in 2021.

For more than 26 minutes, it looked like Bedford was going to make it two titles in three years.

The Cardinals trailed 23-14 at halftime, had turned the ball over a dozen times, gave up 10 offensive rebounds and 18 points in the paint, while shooting 24 percent from the field.

"We told them at halftime, you guys couldn’t have been much worse and you’re only down nine," Kreick said. "You’ve been here before, you’ve just got to keep chipping away. Get stops and we’ll eventually put the ball in the basket. With seven minutes left, I wasn’t quite sure I was believing my own words, but we started getting stops.

Aside from a pair of free throws by Ava Dubois, the Cardinals held the Bulldogs scoreless for the first five minutes of the fourth quarter.

At the other end, Paquette scored 12 of her game-high 24 points in the final frame to go with 11 rebounds and four steals, while Meghan Stack scored the go-ahead basket with 5:09 remaining, part of a 10-point, five-rebound performance.

"We were fine," Paquette said. "I knew that we had it. We’d been in situations like that before, so it was nothing new to us. We just needed to continue to do us."

As a team, Bishop Guertin was 13 of 17 from the line in the final eight minutes and 19 of 25 overall, while Bedford was 2 of 8 at the line in the fourth and 7 of 22 overall.

"Numbers don’t lie, turnovers and free throws," Bedford coach Kevin Gibbs said. "We outshot them from the field again, like we have every time we play them. We shoot the ball better from the field, we score more buckets, we have a better percentage, but they beat us at the line.

"Either them making or us missing, and that’s huge. That and taking care of the ball. They had 18 turnovers, but I’d like to think a lot of that was our defense. We also turned the ball over (23 times) and a lot of them were unforced errors. They were decisions in the moment that went awry."

Lana McCarthy and Kate Allard led Bedford (19-3) with 15 points apiece, with McCarthy adding 15 rebounds and Allard nine. Dubois had seven points and eight boards, as the Bulldogs had a 42-32 advantage on the glass and a 12-4 edge in second-chance points.

Bedford got off to a great start, jumping out to a 6-0 lead and stretching it to 10-2 before Kreick used a timeout with 5:05 to play in the first quarter. The Bulldogs led 14-7 after one quarter and kept the Cardinals at bay through the second to take a nine-point lead into halftime.

Despite that lead, the Bulldogs didn't feel comfortable at the break.

"We knew exactly what we wanted to do and we did," Gibbs said. "We knew they’d come back at us. Even though we were up nine at the half, it didn’t feel like a good nice.

"We held them to 14, great, but we only scored 23 and we should have been in the 30s with all the mistakes that we made. Knowing how good they are, I knew nine was not a comfortable lead."

The teams traded baskets to start the third quarter, with a layup by Stack making it a 27-20 game, but Allard answered with a basket of her own to start a 6-0 run that gave Bedford it's biggest lead, 33-20, with 3:20 to in the frame.

Bishop Guertin responded with six straight points of its own to get back within seven, but a buzzer-beater by Lyla Stein gave Bedford a 10-point lead going into the final quarter.

And that's when Paquette took over.

"I don’t know what to say about the kid anymore," Kreick said. "What do you say about a kid who, for four years, has just, in the biggest moments, with the brightest lights, has always showed up and been the best kid. You have to tip your cap to a kid like that. You have to thank your lucky stars she was wearing your uniform and not someone else’s."