Before the Super Bowl, it’s a double-fun Super Saturday at the GMC Tournament

With the high school sports calendar again conflicting with the one of the world’s biggest sporting events, the GMC Tournament quarterfinals will both take place Saturday morning and afternoon, with four games in each bracket on tap.

This year’s event moved from Middlesex County College due to increased costs for the college that had to be absorbed by the league. The GMC hopes it will hold events there again in the future, as we were told by league president Mike Pede. 

So, we’ve got four boys’ games at Piscataway High School at 10 am, noon, 2 and 4 pm. The girls’ games at Spotswood High School at the “traditional” GMC quarterfinal times of 11 am, 1, 3 and 5 pm.

Below is a preview of all eight games on the GMCT slate for Saturday afternoon.

GMCT Boys’ Quarterfinals – Piscataway High School:

10 am: (3) Monroe (15-6) vs. (6) South Plainfield (17-6): With Monroe in the Red Division and South Plainfield in the White, this will be the first time these teams have met in seven years, when they were both in the White together. They split a pair of regular season games in 2015-16. South Plainfield has won three straight, including a non-conference win over Ridge a week ago. If you believe in the transitive property of sports, the Red Devils beat St. Joseph-Metuchen – the GMCT’s top seed – 70-60 back in Livingston’s holiday tournament on December 29th. They also beat a very good Watchung Hills team on January 15th. But Monroe isn’t without big wins, either. They beat St. Thomas Aquinas – the four-seed in this event – 58-43 back on January fourth with a barrage of ten threes, a trio each from Myles Marabuto, Mark Laughery and Brody Piscitelli. The Tigers have a balanced scoring attack as well, with leading scorer Abdul Adebule averaging 16 points a game and having tallied five double-doubles on the season.

Noon: (1) St. Joseph-Metuchen (17-7) vs. (9) Timothy Christian (15-7): This will be the first meeting ever between the schools, an exciting proposition for the Tigers, who are raising their profile in the GMC. They’re coming off a huge win at Spotswood in the first round, 75-56, after the two teams split their regular season meetings – both winning by eight – and the GMC seeding committee broke their Blue Division tie in favor of Spotswood, which got the 8-seed, while Timothy got the nine. They are not the Timothy Christian of years past, and are battle-tested. They placed North Plainfield out of the White in the Butch Kowal Holiday Tournament, taking a slim 59-58 loss. They challenged Franklin on the road out of Somerset County, and even played up to South Plainfield and Old Bridge, although all three were losses. And St. Joseph may just be a different beast. The question is, will they have the length to deal with 6-7 Chukwudi Raphael-Mamah’s presence inside? He’s averaging a double-double of 12.2 points and 12.3 rebounds a game. On the other side, will the Tigers have anyone who can stop Jeremy Clayville? He’s scoring 20 points per game, and put the GMC on notice when he dropped 43 in the opener at Piscataway. He’s scored 20-plus points in ten of 22 games this season, three times topping 30, and once hitting 40.

2 pm: (4) St. Thomas Aquinas (14-9) vs. (12) East Brunswick (12-2): The Bears are coming off a big first-round win over Old Bridge, 51-50, and have put together a four-game winning streak for the second time this year. They had split with the Knights in the regular season, winning their first meeting but dropping the second. In their first meeting with St. Thomas this season, they lost 66-47 back on January 2nd in North Edison. But they hung in early, down just 14-13 after the first quarter, and by seven at halftime, before the Trojans pulled away in the fourth. Matt Mikulka is the leading scorer at 16.3 points per game, and Cam Vick (9.5 ppg) hit two key free throws in the final minute in the Old Bridge tourney win, so if they can stay in it late and make big plays they may have a chance. Aquinas head coach Bob Turco had to assemble an almost completely new roster due to graduation and transfers following last season, and all they did was get off to a 7-0 start to the season. Of their nine losses, four came in the GMC Red Division: two each to Colonia and St. Joe’s, and one to Monroe. Don’t be fooled by the fact they’ve dropped five of their last seven games. Colonia and Joe’s were in that mix, along with losses to Northern Highlands (17-5), Union Catholic (16-6, #18 in New Jersey) and St. Peter’s Prep (21-1, #5 in New Jersey). Rinelson Dilone is the Trojans’ top scorer, and averaging a double-double, at 15.7 points per game, while adding 13.8 rebounds per contest.

4 pm: (2) Colonia (15-8) vs. (7) Woodbridge (15-6): Hard to believe, but these two in-town rivals haven’t played since December 2022. The Patriots have won ten straight, with the Barrons last win coming in January of 2018, a 47-46 victory that followed a regular season loss by four, and preceded the start of Colonia’s streak against the red-and-black, a 51-35 win in the GMC Tournament’s first round. The Patriots beat them again in the first round in 2019, and Colonia head coach Jose Rodriguez is 9-0 all-time against Woodbridge. None of that really matters now. What does matter is that Colonia has won six of its last seven games, and six in a row against the GMC, including Monroe and East Brunswick, which are both playing Saturday as well. But Woodbridge is hot, too, having won seven of their last eight, the lone loss coming to East Brunswick. They also had a 70-62 win at South Plainfield in that stretch, which helped them earn a share of the GMC White. Both teams like to get up and down the floor, or at least that’s what we’ve seen historically from Colonia, as well as from Woodbridge when this year in their game against the Tigers. Senior Micah Eason just became a thousand-point scorer for the Barrons, eclipsing the mark in the first round win over South Brunswick. He’s been consistently consistent, averaging over 14 points a game not this year, but for his career. On the other side, it’s Aiden Derkack who makes the Patriots go, scoring 19.8 points per game this season. Not only that, but he steps up in the big games. He scored 38 in their first win over division rival St. Thomas Aquinas this season, also grabbing 11 rebounds, and hitting 4 threes. He had a more “pedestrian” but still-stellar night in their rematch, pouring in 21 points as they swept the Trojans in the regular season.

GMCT Girls’ Quarterfinals – Spotswood High School:

11 am: (2) Colonia (17-7) vs. (7) East Brunswick (14-8): Colonia took both meetings between the teams, both last month, but one was close and the other was not. The Patriots beat the Lady Bears by 30 on January fourth, 58-28, behind a 16-point, 17-rebound night from the young lady who makes it all go, Taylor Derkack, who’s not the all-time leading scorer in girls’ basketball history at the school, with 1,918 points. Averaging 24 points a game, she very would could crack the 2,000-point mark in the in the county final, should the Patriots get there. Ah, but that second game is what would give EB some hope. It was only two weeks ago the Bears lost by one at home, and they probably shouldn’t have. They jumped out to a monster 26-9 lead after one quarter, and led 49-41 going into the final eight minutes. But Colonia won it, and in the end, Derkack got another double-double: 28 points and 18 boards. The old adage is it’s hard to beat a team a third time in a season (see Middlesex below) so who knows how this one will go? East Brunswick will try to build off that one-point loss, while Colonia would much rather not fall behind big early and have to dig out of a hole. And East Brunswick did beat the Patriots once last season when they had Derkack and Matti Chiera, who’s now at William Patterson. The Lady Bears don’t have a big scorer, per say, but are balanced, with six players who’ve scored at least 120 points each on the roster, led by Julianna DelosSantos-Branson, averaging a sliver below 11 points a game. No one else scores in double figures, but many score, which can help.

1 pm: (6) South Brunswick (12-10) vs. (14) Middlesex (14-11): With the Vikings in the Red and the Blue Jays having generally been a Blue or White team, these two rarely meet, so there’s no effective recent history to look at. In fact, since 2011, the teams have only played twice, and both times in the GMC Tournament first round. The last meeting was in 2020, won by Middlesex, while South Brunswick won an earlier matchup in 2017. So, what to make of this one? South Brunswick has a new head coach in Ryan Murphy, who took over for Jeff Johnson. They dropped three of their first five games, but are 9-5 since, and have won three of their last four, including a nine-point win over Woodbridge Thursday night in the first round. They’ve played the two top teams in the division tough, splitting with Colonia and losing twice to St. Thomas Aquinas, by 19 and nine points, respectively. But Middlesex avenged a pair of regular season losses Thursday night, knocking off JP Stevens, the first top four seed to lose in the round of 16 on the girls side since Bishop Ahr (now St. Thomas Aquinas) in 2013. Junior Jessica Devine is the real deal, averaging 22.9 points a game, hitting 48 threes on the year. And then there’s Jaclyn Deshields, averaging nine points a game, but with with 52 triples; that’s 84% of her scoring coming from beyond the arc. South Brunswick has its stars, too. Meher Vig (14 points per game), Leilani Pinder (10.5 ppg) and Alexis Lease-Springer (9.3 ppg) are a three-headed beast to contend with. They can also hit the three-ball as a team. This might be the most underrated game of the day on the girls’ side on paper, but there’s a lot of star-power here for a 6/14 game in the quarterfinals of the county tournament.

3 pm: (4) North Plainfield (18-4) vs. (5) Monroe (15-8): Here’s another matchup with very little history, but that’s because this is just the second year in the GMC for North Plainfield, which previously had played in the Skyland Conference, and is in Somerset County, so they played in the SCT all these years. But their only meeting in at least a decade or so came back in December, when the Canucks beat the Falcons 50-36. That was part of a 5-0 start to the season that came to a halt with two losses in the West Orange Holiday Showcase to Teaneck and Paterson Eastside, but they came right back and won nine straight before a loss to Woodbridge; they also lost to JP Stevens. Both those teams are out, though, and the Canucks are still alive. The two biggest scorers are a couple of sophomores, which hint at perhaps an extended period of success for head coach Derrick Eatman’s program: Kaelynn Hester is averaging 15.2 points a game, and Layla Gutierrez is scoring at a 14.5 clip. Hester also has 41 treys on the year, while Avani Jones has hit 33. Monroe, meanwhile, hit a tough stretch in late January. At 11-3, they lost four straight to Plainfield, Piscataway, St. Thomas Aquinas and Colonia, but have won four of five since, their lone loss coming to South Brunswick. They’ve hit 145 times from beyond the arc this year, so expect to see the deep ball. Halley Cottrell (19.1 ppg) and Evangeline Francisco (14.9 ppg) are the big names for the Falcons. This should be another excellent matchup.

5 pm: (1) St. Thomas Aquinas (18-7) vs. (8) Spotswood (19-4): This one may be tricky. On paper, the records are similar, but Spotswood will have quite the hill to climb against a team that has won the last four GMC Tournament titles, going back to 2019 before they changed their name back from Bishop Ahr. Aquinas hasn’t lost a GMC game all year under first-year head coach Tim Corrigan, who was on Joe Whalen’s staff last year. In fact, their last league loss – regular season or post – was a 55-41 regular season loss to Monroe on January 20th, 2022, a streak of 46 straight against the GMC. The Trojans lost some to graduation, and Leah Crosby via transfer to Rutgers Prep, but junior Gianna Chuffo has taken over, averaging 16 points a game, and she has hit a whopping 76 treys on the season. Leah Kearney is averaging eight points a game, but also 9.9 boards a contest, and Jordan Barnes and Trista Whitney are major contributors, too. Spotswood is the Blue Division champion, running the table across 14 games this season, but has challenged itself out of conference. The Group 2 Chargers played nothing but Group 4 schools in the Lady Chiefs Holiday showcase in Piscataway, where they dropped three games to Colonia, the hosts, and Old Bridge, but by a combined 24 points. And it may have already paid off, as Spotswood avenged the loss to the Chiefs by beating them 57-50 Thursday night to get to the round of 16. Lizzie Calandruccio is the big scorer for Spotswood, at 17.2 points per game, while Gabby Hill and Ava Fama are major contributors as well. The Chargers play well as a unit. Will it be enough against the top-seed in the tournament?