Pinkerton girls basketball takes out Bishop Guertin to move on to D1 semifinals
NASHUA - Lani Buskey had watched her Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team play two different kinds of game all season.
Sometimes, Pinkerton would play physical, but not with much focus. Other times, the focus would be there, and the physical play was not.
In Friday's Division I quarterfinal against Bishop Guertin, the Astros finally put both games together.
No. 5 Pinkerton battled No. 4 Bishop Guertin inside on defense and did just enough on offense to pull off a 36-33 playoff win over the Cardinals on their home court for the second season in a row.
"I'm impressed with my girls," Buskey said. "I threw a little bit of a different game strategy at them, challenged them a little bit. Kept it simple, but made a change, and they stepped up.
"What I was most impressed with was the combination of their physicality and their focus. That's something we've been working on all season. Some games we'd have the physicality and some games we'd have the focus, but we struggled to make the two work. They brought both those things."
Valerie Martin led Pinkerton (15-5) with 11 points, including a 3-pointer with 1:17 remaining that was the difference, and Marissa Stacy added nine points as the Astros knocked Bishop Guertin out in the quarterfinals for the second straight year.
Last year, the Cardinals struggled to make shots from in close and at the free throw line. This year, it was more of the same.
"Same thing to the same team," Bishop Guertin coach Jeremy Faulkner said. "We missed 14 layups and we were 11 for 22 at the free throw line. Same thing that knocked us out last year, that’s it. From day one, we told them that if we don't capitalize on that, come playoff time, it's going to hurt us. It did.
"But the girls played their butts off. Absolutely. They didn't give up. We wanted the ball back bad and I'm so proud of my girls for just staying in it, knowing we still had a chance. They gave us the chance but we just didn't get the shot off."
Meghan Cramb and Molly Dee each had 10 points for Bishop Guertin, which trailed for most of the game, but never by more than five points. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, that deficit came after Martin's 3.
"I always tell them that we have tremendous weapons as long as you run the offense and hit the right weapon at the right time," Buskey said. "In that moment, Val was the right weapon at the right time, so I'm OK with it. The next thought was get back on defense, please get back on defense."
Bishop Guertin was able to cut the lead to three, and got the ball back after a Pinkerton turnover with 7.5 seconds to play. Faulkner took a timeout and drew up a final play for Cramb to attempt a 3-pointer from the left corner.
But the play slowly dissolved, as Cramb collided with a teammate as she tried to get to the corner and the ball sailed out of bounds with 1.9 seconds to go.
"We wanted a misdirection play," Faulkner said. "The first screen coming across, set up for Cramb, was perfect. Then we just had missed assignments and we didn't come over to set up that second screen. It came down to the last second and I guess people thought it wouldn't work and tried to scramble out to get it.
"That last-second shot didn't lose the game for us. It was free throws and missed layups."
Pinkerton moves on to the semifinals, where it will face No. 9 Winnacunnet, which upset top-seeded Bedford, at 8 p.m. Monday at Southern New Hampshire University. No. 3 Manchester Central and No. 2 Londonderry will play in the other semifinal.
