Pinkerton girls basketball overcomes slow start to beat Bishop Guertin (video)

DERRY - When the Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team squared off Tuesday against Bishop Guertin, the Astros might have been caught off guard by what they were seeing.

The Cardinals came out throwing defensive pressure at Pinkerton, and for most of the first half, it worked. The Astros took a two-point lead into halftime, but had just 19 points on the board.

By the end of the third quarter, Pinkerton turned things around, closing on a 7-0 run to go up seven, and then doubling its lead early in the fourth before a late run by the Cardinals made it a 52-43 win over Bishop Guertin in a Division I contest at the Hackler Gymnasium.

Brooke Benz finished with 16 points and Sydney Gerossie added 14 points, with the pair combining to go 10 of 11 at the line, part of an 18-for-21 performance by the Astros (6-1) on the day.

"Kudos to BG, they showed up to play for sure," Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey said. "This was a little taste of situational basketball for us, which I’ve been impressing on my girls we need to work on. We showed some bright spots in there and we showed some failure out there in situational basketball. Good news is we came out with a victory."

It was a rough start though for the Astros, as Thalia Drapeau and Holly Dufoe hit back-to-back 3-pointers for the Cardinals (3-3) to open the scoring. It took Pinkerton more than three minutes to get on the board and Bishop Guertin held leads of 8-2 and 10-5 in the quarter.

"I’m trying to tell my girls, when you’re feeling a lot of pressure and physicality, to stick with the offense," Buskey said. "You saw in the first half, we bailed. I think we scored 19 points. We ran a play one time, it didn’t work, and we bailed. I wouldn’t say we took bad shots, but they weren’t the right shots. Second half we settled down a bit. Last two minutes were stressful, but we needed that."

The Astros had a 14-point lead with just over three minutes remaining, but the Cardinals were able to cut that down to eight in half that time before Pinkerton went 6 for 6 at the line to close out the game.

That start to the game, and the fight at the end, were things that Bishop Guertin coach Olivia Orlando has been looking to see from her team against opponents at the top of the division.

"As we have faced talented teams so far, I think we’ve backed down in a sense," she said. "It felt good for them to really compete the whole entire game. It made me really proud.

"We came out and were just ready to compete and ready to go. Being able to capitalize on those moments will be the biggest area where we can grow in."

Bishop Guertin held a 12-10 lead at the end of one, and a big part of that was limiting Gerossie to just two free throws in the opening quarter. A 3-pointer late in the half by the senior helped give Pinkerton a 19-17 lead at halftime and gave her a game-high seven points at the break.

"I thought we’d be a little more composed, but we’ll get better at that," Buskey said. "We’ve got to do more off-ball to get Syd open. It also calls on the others to take that next step, now you need to look for your offense. Benz has come around, Kaylee (Dupuis) has moments of it, but I need the others to recognize that as well. It’s getting there."

Kayden Rioux opened the second half with a 3 to give the Cardinals a 20-19 lead, and they tied the game at 23 on a basket by Jas Rosario with 4:31 remaining. But Pinkerton answered with a basket by Hayden Leccese, starting a 7-0 run to end the quarter that gave the Astros a 30-23 advantage.

Pinkerton carried it over into the fourth, making it a 16-2 run to take a 39-25 lead with 5:32 remaining, with Gerossie scoring seven points to open the final quarter.

"I think it’s hard, once you’ve dug yourself a little bit of a hole, to dig back up. It came down to conditioning. We looked pretty gassed and pretty tired by the end there, and that’s something we need to continue to work on and grow on as we progress."

Rosario came off the bench to lead the Cardinals with 16 points while Maggie Gallagher added seven points and Rioux and Dufoe had six each.