Rutgers Prep, Hillsborough girls to meet for third time this year, with trip to SCT finals on the line

The first of four semifinals in the Somerset County Tournament Saturday at Franklin High School will certainly have a championship flair to it.

Both second-seed Rutgers Prep and third-seed Hillsborough won sectional championships last year, the Argonauts in Non-Public South B, and the Raiders in North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4.

And while Prep has won a ton of those titles lately, along with four straight SCT championships, and five of the last seven, Saturday’s 11 am matchup for a trip to next week’s county final should be a good one.

You can hear that game live on Central Jersey Sports Radio, with Mike Pavlichko and Chris Tsakonas calling all the action from Franklin High School. Pregame is at 10:45 am; click here to listen.

Prep comes in at 17-4, their lone loss in the Skyland Conference coming to Gill St. Bernard’s – with whom they split this year – their first league defeat since the 2019 SCT final to eventual Tournament of Champions’ winner Franklin.

Having lost four starters from last year’s team – three to graduation, while a fourth moved to Florida – this year’s squad has been more of a learning, growing one under veteran head coach Mary Klinger, who often considers the entire regular season a tune-up for postseason play, when the games “really matter.”

They’re led by junior Ava LaMonica, the most experienced of the group, at 13.3 points per game. But the other Ava – Ava Frith, a Manasquan transfer – and Ridge transfer Sophia Georgiadis have been huge, as has been freshman Hailey Benbow. Klinger says her athleticism reminds her of Mikayla Blakes, the two-time Central Jersey Sports Radio Player of the Year who’s now at Vanderbilt.

Hillsborough has an experienced core back, but has been unable to get over the hump against Prep. In two meetings this year, the Argonauts won 66-52 on January ninth in Hillsborough, then 76-65 at home. They’ve been some of the closest meetings in the series of late. The two meetings last year, for example, were decided by an average 37 points.

The Raiders are led by Francesca (Cesci) Schiro, the all-time leading scorer in school history – girls or boys – with 1,906 points, averaging 21.1 per game. At that pace, a trip to the finals and a deep run in Central Jersey Group 4 could get her to be the first player in school history to crack 2,000.

But the rest of the lineup can score, too, including fellow senior Mya Loniewski and sophomore Isabella Ruh. And all that will be essential if the Raiders hope to end a losing streak against the Argonauts that’s at least 15 games dating back to at least 2008, the latest year for which results are publicly available online.

Click below to hear from both coaches ahead of Saturday morning’s Somerset County Tournament semifinal between 2-seed Rutgers Prep and 3-seed Hillsborough: