Bishop Guertin girls basketball coach Brad Kreick says it took him about 10 days before he could move on from the Cards' 64-46 title loss to Bedford in the Division I title game, Guertin's first loss in a finals in his six seasons as coach. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – He stopped looking at the tape about a week ago, and put it away.

Sure, the temptation is there to see it again for the umpteenth time, but Bishop Guertin High School girls basketball coach Brad Kreick has fought that off.

It hasn’t been easy. This is unchartered territory for Kreick and the Cardinals program over the last six years.

Kreick’s tenure began with four straight Divsion I championships, and last year the pandemic forced Guertin to unceremoniously share the title with Goffstown as the tourney was cancelled just before the semis and the top two remaining seeds were named co-champs.

So if BG gets to the title game next year, it will be looking for its players to hoist the title plaque for the first time in three years.

But clearly, the imprint of the 64-46 defeat three weeks ago today at the hands of Bedford in this years finals will remain vivid.

And that’s how Kreick wants it. The Cards don’t have a team break-up meeting as a whole, but rather the coaches meet with the players individually. This year it’s been done virtually, with a couple to go. Remember, BG loses just one senior.

“This year they’ve been particularly good meetings,” Kreick said. “These kids have short memories, in terms of not dwelling on stuff. That’s a good lesson for us all.

“But none of them, to a kid, has said anything to me other than how they hated that feeling, and they don’t want to feel that way again.”

And that was music to Kreick’s ears.

“That’s probably the most important thing,” he said. “They won’t forget how painful that was, and that will motivate them in the off-season to get better. … and come together as a focus for next year, to try to avoid that feeling, because it was the worst of all-time.”

It was a game where Guertin was never really that close. The whole process of moving forward starts at the top, and Kreick admits he “probably didn’t handle it really well in terms of how I processed it. It was a very odd feeling. I felt like a week to 10 days like I was in the twilight zone.

“You watch the film one too many times, have tendency to second guess yourself, those are natural things. It was an unusual way to feel, and it took me awhile to come to peace with it. But as disappointed as it was, we’ve all turned the page and really focused on what we have to do to do better. We were young, but I love the group we have coming back.”

Kreick gives credit where credit is due.

“The biggest thing about that final is not how the year went, but how well the Bedford kids played,” he said. “I think sometimes you have to just give credit to the other team and this is one of those examples. They played a fantastic game, those kids were ready to go. We got beat. We just got beat.”

In none of the title games Guertin never really had to face a player as dominant or talented as Bedford senior Isabella King, who scored 23 points and dominated.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “She was the best individual player that we have played in a Final Four setting in my six years. There’s no question about that. She played (King is Bucknell-bound) like a mid-major Division I college basketball player.”

Remember, Kreick’s sophomore-dominated Cardinals rallied from a 20-point halftime deficit to beat the Bulldogs during an early regular season game back on Jan. 17. But they had a rematch slated for February, but it was wiped out by a snowstorm and never rescheduled.

“I actually don’t think that hurt us,” Kreick said. “I don’t think that made a difference for us or for them. I think the thing that hurt us much more, for all the reasons everybody understands related to COVID and so forth, we were not able to play our traditional schedule that we typically play, with a really young group of kids who would have benefited greatly from four, five, or six very tough out-of-state games. I think that would have helped them a lot in the growth process.

“Would that have made a difference in the final? I don’t know. But I would have felt better about the fact we would have had a lot of tough battles under our belt going into that game. That was the thing, when you think about it, we really missed this year and we look forward to doing that next year again.”

That worked a few years ago when the Cards lost nearly all of those out-of-state battles – which counted in the standings – yet were able to win a title with a junior-dominated team. Kreick feels they missed that “four-quarter, grind-it-out” type of game, perhaps only experiencing some of that vs. Pinkerton and Nashua South on the road.

“I think you saw some of that (inexperience) in the final,” Kreick said.

But now the direction is clear, look ahead, not back. Which is why that tape has been put away.

“Just looking forward now,” Kreick said. “The kids have been great about that. They have a tendency to have shorter memories than we do, which is great. They’re a little more mature than a lot of us in some ways as they’ve turned the page and now they’re looking forward.

“Time for us to do that as well. We’ll take their lead.”

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