The Bainbridge girls rally late to send Holy Names home with a loss.

Thank goodness for Brittany Gray.

The Spartan freshman forward scored 11 of her 21 points in the fourth quarter, while the bench helped the team get back in it at several points as the Bainbridge girls rallied to defeat Holy Names 58-52 Wednesday on Senior Night.

“She finished our plays, and the girls made some nice passes to her,” head coach Penny Gienger said of Gray. “She’s a tough player.”

Both teams struggled out of the gate, as the Spartans and the Cougars had trouble hitting their shots or even getting the ball up the court.

In the second, Holy Names turned up the pressure and made several steals to rattle Bainbridge and put the Spartans down 19-13.

It got so bad, Gienger at one point yanked all five players then on the floor – Gray, Allie Picha, Kaitlin Bailey, Caitlyn Salo and Jacqui Menalia – and put in the bench quintet of Angela Failla, Emily Farrar, Lindsey Bratonia, Kari Pierce and starter Megan Burris – to get something going.

It worked, as the Spartans picked up the defensive intensity while Farrar, Bratonia and Burris scored to give the Spartans the lead.

But Brianna Reichelt hit two three-pointers to put the Cougars up by two at the break.

“They’re tough,” Gienger said of Holy Names. “They play in-your-face, press-your-man defense, and if you’re not ready to make a move or a pass, then obviously they make you look ugly as we did tonight.”

Bailey joked that Spartan boys team forward Austin Wood told them before the game to “trail at halftime so you can make it interesting.”

“Teams that press us, we usually break it,” Bailey said. “But I think that mentally, we weren’t prepared for the game. It was surprising how their press got us rattled. Getting the ball knocked out of our hands, it shouldn’t happen.

“Luckily, we were deep enough in our bench, so if five people aren’t playing that well, there are five other people that can play just as well, which is really positive.”

Picha agreed.

“Our bench is so strong and so deep that we can put five in and we can have success, which is the coolest thing about this game,” she said.

In the third, the Cougars’ Devin Brooks took over, scoring six points and keeping the Spartans from gaining any momentum with her defense.

But the fourth was Gray’s quarter, as she went on a 10-4 run by herself over a four-minute period to put Bainbridge up 53-47.

“She was huge in the fourth quarter,” Bailey said. “We have confidence in her to finish down the stretch, and that’s huge for a freshman.”

Reichelt made it 54-52 with a three from the corner, but that was it. Brooks turned the ball over on a travel and Paula Markey missed a lay-up that would have put them ahead by one.

Pierce said the team won’t worry about how they played.

“It’ll make us that much more ready (for the playoffs),” she said. “We’re determined to do better the next game.”

Bainbridge finished regular season play with a 43-35 win at Bishop Blanchet on Thursday.