A little while before game time on Sunday at Bedford High School, it looked like there were almost more media in the gym than fans.

That tells you a couple of things. One, a sign of the times, where fans allowed at high school games this winter are few and far between. And two, after a very slowwwwww start to this pandemic winter season, we had a big game on our hands.

Bishop Guertin vs. Bedford in girls basketball. Doesn’t get much bigger.

“Great,” Guertn coach Brad Kreick said. “Little extra hop in your step, you can kind of feel it’s game day, and a little extra energy. Even without a lot of people in the stands, you can just feel it. That’s what these kids play for, and look, it was ugly in the first half, but I’m not sure what to say.”

Just say that the Cards’ 69-64 stunning comeback win was a competition that showed exactly why athletic directors, coaches, and kids all over the state, as well as the NHIAA, lobbied their local and state officials to be able to play games this winter. We all know the risk; it’s even greater than it was in the fall, that outdoors vs. indoors COVID thing.

But this was a special game, as most games involving BG and Bedford teams in any sport are. Bedford handed the Cards their last in-state loss three years ago today, a 48-43 game that Guertin later avenged in the 2018 semis.

These two were supposed to meet in last year’s semis before the NHIAA smartly pulled the plug.

And with the cluster/cohort type scheduling the ADs are using, like the fall, these two weren’t on the abbreviated regular season schedule. But kudos to Kreick, Bedford coach Kevin Gibbs, Bedford AD Corey Parker and his Guertin counterpart Ryan Brown for working out at least one game.

“The goal was to try to maximize competition levels,” Parker said. “We wanted at least one game with them, and doing it early made the most sense because of the uncertainty of these seasons.”

Keene is sticking close to home, so as soon as Bedford lost the Blackbirds on the slate, Parker, according to Gibbs, looked to fill it. If someone goes on pause due to COVID, certainly expected, don’t be surprised to see these two play again.

“The first thing we’re going to look at is see if we can schedule another game against each other,” Gibbs said. “Because that’s how we’re going to get better, playing each other.”

It looked like we were all finding out what the changing of the guard feels like. The Bulldogs and their dynamic freshman-senior combo, 6-2 rookie Lana McCarthy and talented season vet Isabella King – yours truly covered King’s dad, Ron, when he was a standout center at Londonderry – were taking the young Cards to school, up 46-28 at the half and by as many as 21 in the third quarter.

Then the Cards, behind among others the sophomore trio of Meghan Stack, Liv Murray and Brooke Paquette, mounted a comeback for the ages.

If the season ends prematurely like last year for everyone, or either of these two teams, we’ll at least have yesterday’s game to look back on.

“It felt really good,” said Murray, who was money from the foul line down the stretch. “This is what we work for in practice.”

“Look, every day we get to practice, every day we get to play, it’s a bonus right now,” Kreick said. “We’ll take it.”

Yes, will we ever. Big games are back, and we hope we’re able this winter to get a few more. Fingers crossed.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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