Veteran, balanced South Brunswick looks to avenge last year’s semifinal loss in CJ4 quarters

Last season, the South Brunswick girls’ basketball team beat Long Branch in the Central Jersey Group 4 quarterfinals before falling to Monroe in the semis, ending the Vikings’ season.

This season, Monroe beat Long Branch in the opening round ahead of Monday’s CJ4 quarterfinal matchup with South Brunswick.

That might not be a guarantee the Vikings will win this time around, but South Brunswick does feel confident after winning the most recent battle between the two.

Now, they’ll play for a third time Monday evening at 5:00 in Monroe, in a game you can hear on Central Jersey Sports Radio, starting with pregame at 4:45 pm, and with Mike Pavlichko calling all the action live. Click here to listen.

The road team has won each of the last three games between these teams, but even that may mean nothing. The difference in the two meetings this year was the scoring.

The Vikings – who’ve had a lower offensive output, averaging 51.2 ppg this year, compared to 59.5 a year ago – were held to just 36 points by Monroe in the opener. That was their third lowest output this season, with Meher Vig’s 12 points the only double-figure scoring. That was also a long time ago, more than two months ago, on December 14th.

In the rematch? South Brunswick scored 62, with three players in double figures, led by Vig’s 19 (and four treys), 16 from Leilani Pinder and 11 from Alexis Lease-Springer.

That’s the core returning trio from this year that forms the nucleus of a veteran group, with seniors Vig and Pinder now fourth-year varsity players, and Lease-Springer a third-year varsity player as a junior. And that’s the core that will need to have success for South Brunswick to keep its season going.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko preview the Monroe game with South Brunswick head coach Ryan Murphy: