Canton — All the St. Bernard School players could do was smile and laugh at the absurdity of Tuesday's 55-27 loss to Canton in the CIAC Class S girls' basketball quarterfinals.

"The score wasn't indicative of how bad the game was," Saints' coach Mike Nystrom said with a smile. "Usually it's the other way around."

The Saints knew what they were up against. The third-seeded Warriors (19-6) are a veteran team that lost to two-time Class S Thomaston in last season's state final, 52-50. They also use a relentless full-court press and trap like cougars amped up on an energy drink.

The Saints (11-13) were forced into 13 turnovers.

In the first quarter.

Canton went ahead, 18-0, before Caitlyn Dittman's jumper got St. Bernard its first points with a minute, 55 seconds left in the period.

"That was what I was worried about," Nystrom said about the press and traps. "It was worse than I thought. I knew we'd have trouble, but we weren't able to handle it all. The game was over right off the bat."

The Saints finished with 29 turnovers.

"We get the guys' JV to come in and they practice with us and they press us, but it's not the same pressure," St. Bernard senior Alex Belisle said. "We knew coming in it was going to be tough to win. Maybe they have an off-night and we could keep up but their press was something different."

Emily Briggs, a 5-foot-11 junior who moves like a guard and rebounds like a post, had 29 points, 11 rebounds and eight steals for Canton. Senior Margaret Treacy added 13 points, 10 steals, and eight assists.

The Warriors will play second-seeded Bolton in next Monday's semifinals. The Bulldogs beat Canton twice during the North Central Connecticut Conference season.

"They're better than us," Nystrom said of Canton. "We knew that."

St. Bernard, seeded 22nd, still won two state tournament games to finish 11-13.

Dittman had 19 points, five rebounds and three blocks for the Saints and Brianna Beverly added seven rebounds.

"We did well to get here," Nystrom said. "We didn't have to win those first two games. They were teams we could beat, obviously, but that doesn't mean you win the game because we lost games this year to teams that we could've beat and we didn't. We did a good job."

Belisle said, "We're not a team that gets down. We're so close. I mean, look at our bench — we have just nine players."

n.griffen@theday.com