Bishop Guertin's Brooke Paquette looses the handle on the ball as Concord's Olivia Crawford looks on during Friday night's Divison I quarterfinal at the Colligadome. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – There’s always a difference in high school state tournament play than what goes on during the regular season.

The Bishop Guertin girls basketball team almost found that out the hard way on Friday night.

The top seeded Cards were flatfooted as they watched the No. 9 Concord Crimson Tide jump out via the 3-pointer to a 17-7 first quarter lead in the Division I quarterfinals at the Colligadome. Guertin didn’t take the lead until the third quarter and luckily pulled away for a 66-48 win over a Tide team it bet 74-36 during the season.

The win propels BG into the semis vs. No. 4 Goffstown on Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at a site that has yet to be announced. The Grizzlies beat Pinkerton 62-53 in their quarterfinal.

“Nothing’s easy, and it’s not supposed to be easy, that’s what the state tournament’s about,” Guertin coach Brad Kreick said, his defending champions now 19-0. “I think sometimes you can say things, and it goes in one ear and out the other. The more effective thing is to live through a more death experience. We’ll see how they respond to what just happened to them. It’s not like we hadn’t been preaching that.

“I was happy with how they responded in the second half. But if we show up like that in the first half Tuesday night, then our season’s going to be over.”

Concord (11-9) had four of their eight 3-pointers in the first period, but the Tide also went ice cold, going scoreless for a near eight-minute stretch that began midway in the second period and bled into the third.

“That’s how we rolled all year, hot and cold, like the Celtics sometimes,” Concord coach Rob Darrell said. “We came out, nothing to lose, and the shots we were taking, were falling at first.

“The last BG game, we played Portsmouth and BG back-to-back. We were going through a rough stretch at the time. I said ‘We might get our butts kicked, but you’re going to work hard these two games, so you’re going to remember them later and you won’t be afraid of them next time.”

They had no fear early, and the game was still tied at 29 at the half as the Cards somewhat recovered. But the key was the third quarter, as Guertin’s transition game off the press finally clicked and a Catelyn Wheeler layup gave the hosts a 46-36 lead and they took a 46-38 lead into the final period. Then Guertin went on a 12-3 layup run and after a Brooke Paquette (game-high 18 points) traditional three-point play, the Cards led 58-41 with 4:20 to play. Order had been restored.

“That was great,” Kreick said of the comeback effort and second half dominance. “Look, they’re a competitive bunch, they got pushed up against the wall, and I thought they responded pretty well. So we’ll take that as the positive from the game.”

But it wasn’t that way early on. And Kreick says that has been the continuation of an alarming trend – teams are getting open looks from downtown.

“They (the Tide) shot the heck out of it,” Kreick said. “But good high school teams, when they get wide open 3’s, will knock shots down. Same thing happened to us against Exeter, same thing happened in stretches against Bedford and against Windham. So the point here is there’s a trend that’s emerged in the last three or four weeks that gets you beat.”

Bishop Guertin girls basketball coach Brad Kreick didn’t like what he saw or heard during the first half of Friday night’s Divison I quarterfinal vs. Concord at the Colligadome. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

What stops that trend?

“I think it’s a focus and intensity on the defensive side of the ball,” Kreick said. “We’ve gotten used to scoring more points than other teams, as opposed to allowing less points. It may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it’s everything.”

Meghan Stack added 15 for the Cards while Whitney Vaillant had 14 and Delaney Duford 12 for the Tide.

And next up is Goffstown, as the road gets tougher. Portsmouth and Bedford, as expected, are in the other semi.

“Anybody we see from here in out, will flat out beat us if we don’t show up from the opening tip,” Kreick said. “We’re a solid team, but we’re just not that good. You can’t play middling to average and expect to win a state championship. That’s kind of a harsh thing to say, but it happens to be true.”

And Friday night, for a while from the BG perspective, the truth hurt.