Bulldogs hang on to beat Astros

Friday, February 22, 2013

Joe Marchilena photo

Bedford's Brianna Purcell, right, and Caroline Conrad battle with Pinkerton's Kayla Stacy for a rebound during Friday's game.

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No basketball team, no matter how talented, is going to make all of its shots.

That’s why Bedford High School girls basketball coach Sue Thomas was nervous.

The Bulldogs came out on fire Friday night against Pinkerton, burying shots from almost anywhere on the floor, and Thomas thought, at some point, it was going to end.

It did, but Bedford was able to hold off the Astros for a 55-39 victory that moved the Bulldogs into second place in Division I.

McKenzie Brown led the way with 17 points and Rachel Collins added 16 for Bedford (14-2 in Division I), as the two combined for 23 points in the first half and helped the Bulldogs end the first quarter up 21-4.

“We got off to a bad start, and this is the second game in a row,” Pinkerton coach John Barry said. “Against Bishop Guertin (on Tuesday), we got off to a bad start, and you can’t get in a hole like 11-0 or 13-0. Bedford can shoot, boy can they shoot. They just didn’t miss at all in the beginning.”

Brandi Bonneau and Colleen Fortier each had nine points for the Astros (14-2), who dropped their second in a row.

Collins scored Bedford’s first seven points of the second quarter in 1:47 to put the Bulldogs up by 18 points. But the rest of the quarter belonged to Pinkerton, as the Astros outscored Bedford 14-6 to cut the lead to 10 points at halftime.

Pinkerton held Bedford to seven points in the third quarter, thanks to some better perimeter defense.

“We just adjusted the personnel,” Barry said. “We had a couple of kids who weren’t defending well on Brown. The kids rotated a little better and did the things they were supposed to do defensively.”

Of course, it helped the Astros that the Bulldogs started to go cold.

“We’re a good shooting team, but to shoot that well for that long, and what happened was that we were shooting so well, we stopped crashing the offensive boards,” Thomas said. “We had no body under the boards, so when we starting missing, they had to get back into that. We did a better job in the second half of feeding our post players, and not necessarily having them score off it, but just playing an inside-outside game. It got us back into rhythm.”

But not before Pinkerton made it a four-point game to start the fourth quarter. A layup by Bonneau made it 41-37, but the Astros would only manage two free throws for the rest of the game.

Bedford finished the game on a 14-2 run, including six points from Brown in the final 2:13.

“We just never let down,” Thomas said. “I saw a lot of leadership from my girls. McKenzie (Brown) and Haley (Driscoll) just in the post, they kept talking and yelling things out. Rachel Collins stepped up huge for us.”