GMC Tournament Boys’ Final Preview: Top-seed Colonia, two-seed Piscataway to face off in first all-public title tilt in nearly two decades

For one year at least, there will be a break in the dominance of parochial schools in the GMC Tournament title game.

For the first time since 2006, there will be two public schools in the Grater Middlesex Conference boys’ final, as top-seed Colonia takes on second-seed Piscataway Friday night for the league championship at Monroe High School.

The Patriots – who won the title last year – became the first public to win it since they did in 2015, and they were also in the game the last time two public schools met in the finals. Second-seed Colonia, under Ken Pace, knocked off top-seed Metuchen – led by Rich Stoner – in the 2006 finals.

You can hear Friday’s GMC Tournament championship doubleheader exclusively on Central Jersey Sports Radio Friday night, starting with the 6 pm girls’ opener between five-time defending champ and top-seed St. Thomas Aquinas and second-seed Monroe. The boys’ championship tips at 8:00. Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel will call all the action, with pregame starting at 5:45. Click here to listen.

Our tournament coverage is presented by the George Street Playhouse in downtown New Brunswick, and during the broadcast, we’ll have a chance for fans to win family four-packs of tickets to the LeBron James play “King James,” running March 18th to April 6th.

Friday night’s final also will be a rematch of sorts of last year’s championship game, where Colonia beat St. Thomas Aquinas to end the Trojans’ string of three straight GMCT titles. STA head coach Bob Turco left after six seasons last offseason to take the job at Piscataway, and once again will face Colonia coach Jose Rodriguez.

“J-Rod” was a student-athlete at Carteret back in the day, and played on the basketball team when Bob Turco was an assistant under his brother Dave, who’s now at Kean University. This will be the third “student vs. mentor” battle this year between the two, always a hot ticket in Middlesex County.

Colonia – this year’s Red Division champion, the first in program history in the league’s top division – is in the finals for a third time in the last four years, and also beat St. Thomas in the 2021 COVID season’s Karl-Anthony Towns/Jay Williams four-team pod, the de facto GMC championship.

Turco and Rodriguez are also the only two active boys’ coaches in the league ever to win a GMC title. Only two others have even coached in it: Mark Motusesky of East Brunswick, and John Wojcik of Sayreville, whose third-seeded White Division champion Bombers were eliminated by the Chiefs, 73-62, in Wednesday’s semifinals.

But this will be about the players. Minus the inside presence of Aiden Derkack, who Turco has called “the best player in the state of New Jersey,” these teams are carbon copies of each other. They play defense, play fast, get up and down the floor, can shoot, and can rebound. It’s going to come down to whoever does it better. Derkack can’t do it alone, and his team knows it, and they rarely let that happen.

This is one of those games where it can’t.

Colonia may be the No. 1 seed, and the team everyone has been chasing all year long in the GMC. But it wouldn’t be a surprise either if Piscataway won. These teams about as evenly matched as you could get, perhaps more than any two others in the GMC in 2025.

MORE ON THE GMC TOURNAMENT BOYS’ FINAL:

(1) Colonia (22-4) vs. (2) Piscataway (22-4)
When: Friday, 8 pm
Where: Monroe Township High School
Broadcast Team: Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel (LISTEN HERE)

COACHES:

Colonia: Jose Rodriguez, 7th season (148-43)
Piscataway: Bob Turco, 1st season (394-127 overall, including St. Thomas Aquinas, Notre Dame, and Monroe)

PREVIEW INTERVIEWS:

HOW THEY GOT HERE:

Colonia: The Patriots shot past their first three opponents, handling 16th-seed Monroe in the first round – the round of 16 – 65-44, then topped 8-seed Woodbridge 72-51 in the quarterfinals last Saturday at Piscataway. Junior Aiden Derkack averaged 25.5 points per game in the first two contests, then had 29 Wednesday night, making 20 trips to the foul line, in an 85-53 rout of St. Thomas Aquinas that was decided early in the third quarter. R.J. Wortman, considered by many an X-factor, glue guy – whatever you want to call him – finished with 20 and seven rebounds. Zach Smith and Jayce Rodriguez each hit twice from beyond the arc.

Piscataway: The Chiefs had two easy games in their first two in the tournament as well, getting past 15-seed North Brunswick in the round of 16, 86-42, then topping 10-seed Timothy Christian, the Blue Division champion, 94-61. The Chiefs got a tougher test Wednesday night, as junior Josh Lima played perhaps the game of his life, scoring 24 points – nine more than his previous career high – in a 73-62 win over third-seed Sayreville that was much closer than the score indicated. No one led by more than nine in the game, and the Bombers had leads of seven points in the third quarter and six in the fourth. But the Chiefs made some key plays in the final minute and were able to take advantage of several calls that went their way by capitalizing with buckets on the other end.

TOP SCORERS:

Colonia: Aiden Derkack (25.5 ppg, 18 treys), R. J. Wortman (11.5 ppg, 3 treys), Jayce Rodriguez (47 treys)
Piscataway: Nate Davis (14.2 ppg, 43 treys), Donald Nwaigwe (11.5 ppg), Josh Lima (10.4 ppg, 32 treys), Vaugh Turner (10 ppg)

TOP REBOUNDERS:

Colonia: Aiden Derkack (8.5 rpg), R.J. Wortman (6.8 rpg)
Piscataway: Donald Nwaigwe (6.3 rpg), Vaughn Turner (5.6 rpg)

MISCELLANEOUS:

Colonia: Aiden Derkack (21 blocks, 46 steals), Zach Smith (106 assists)
Piscataway: Vaughn Turner (33 blocks), Josh Lima (67 steals), Landon Pernell (104 assists)

RECENT MEETINGS: Colonia has won ten straight against Piscataway, including two meetings this year. The first was on December 19th and broadcast on Central Jersey Sports Radio, the Patriots coming out with an 80-61 win at Piscataway. Colonia won at home, 73-56, on January 14th. This will be their first meeting in the GMCT since the 2018 quarterfinals, a game Colonia also won. The Chiefs’ last victory in the series came in December of 2013, a 67-51 Piscataway win.

GMC TOURNAMENT HISTORY:

Colonia (6-6):

• 1969:  (4) Colonia 80, (6) South River 62
• 1979:  (1) South River 60, (2) Colonia 40
• 1980:  (2) Colonia 64, (5) Perth Amboy 62 (OT)
• 1999:  (1) St. Joseph 55, (2) Colonia 47
• 2001:  (2) Colonia 79, (1) St. Joseph 65
• 2002:  (3) Carteret 64, (5) Colonia 51
• 2004:  (1) South Plainfield 57, (3) Colonia 40
• 2006:  (2) Colonia 55, (1) Metuchen 46
• 2015:  (2) Colonia 54, (1) St. Joseph 38
• 2018:  (1) St. Joseph 46, (7) Colonia 43
• 2021:  (2) Colonia 80, (1) St. Thomas Aquinas 64 (Karl-Anthony Towns/Jay Williams Pod)
• 2022:  (1) St. Thomas Aquinas 69, (3) Colonia 53
• 2024:  (2) Colonia 55, (4) St. Thomas Aquinas

Piscataway (7-4):

• 1968:  (3) St. Peter’s 64, *Piscataway 60 (*unseeded, only top 4)
• 1976:  (2) Piscataway 85, (4) Perth Amboy 83
• 1977:  (1) Piscataway 77, (6) Carteret 74 
• 1991:  (3) Piscataway 33, (1) St. Joseph’s 29
• 1994:  (2) Piscataway 49, (1) St. Peter’s 44   
• 1995:  (1) Piscataway 61, (3) East Brunswick 46
• 1996:  (1) East Brunswick 51, (2) Piscataway 44
• 2007:  (6) Piscataway 59, (5) Cardinal McCarrick 50
• 2009:  (1) Piscataway 63, (3) St. Joseph 56             
• 2011:  (2) St. Joseph 51, (1) Piscataway 43     
• 2019:  (3) St. Joseph 49, (5) Piscataway 46

OTHER NOTES:

Championship Coaches: Colonia has won four GMC Tournament titles, and also won two Middlesex County Tournament titles prior to formation of the GMC for the 1986 season. And of all of those, only one coach won multiple titles. Bob Stansilow won the school’s first in 1969, then Bob Tisdale led the 1980 Patriots to their second and final MCT title. Ken Pace – who later became the high school principal, is now retired, but regularly attends games – is the only coach in school history to win multiple titles, bringing home the trophy in 2001 and 2006. One of his outstanding players, Chris Chiera, won the title as head coach in 2015 before Jose Rodriguez took home the hardware last season.

On the Piscataway side, the Chiefs have won seven titles, and every coach who’s won it has brought back multiple titles. Windy McGriff’s P’way teams won back-to-back MCT titles in 1976 and 1977. Paul Schoeb – who later became the school’s athletic director – won three in a span of five years, taking the GMC crown in 1991, as well as 1994 and 1995. Guy Jensen then won championships in 2007 and 2009. Turco is looking to be the fourth coach in Piscataway history to win the county title.

Championship Coaches, Part Two: With Piscataway now in the finals, Bob Turco has become the first coach in GMC history to bring three different schools to the finals. Until this year, he was one of three to bring two different schools to the GMC title game, and two share the same last name. Ken Pace brought JFK in 1990 and won it over top-seed Perth Amboy, then he took Colonia several times in the 90s, winning in 2001 over top-seed St. Joseph. Speaking of the Falcons, Bob’s brother Dave brought Carteret to two finals, winning in 2002 over a Pace-coached Colonia club. Then, of course, he went to – and won – a slew of titles with St. Joseph. Bob has been as the head coach of Monroe, but lost his only trip there in 2010 to his brother Dave and the Falcons, and went to five in six seasons as head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas, winning three of them.

One-off? Colonia is looking to repeat as champions, and the GMC has seen a few streaks over the last decade. Not counting the COVID pod year, St. Thomas Aquinas won three straight titles from 2020 through 2023, while St. Joseph won four straight from 2016 to 2019 before that. The last one-time winner was Colonia in 2016, which snapped a string of five straight titles by the Falcons, who won nine of ten in a stretch from 2010 through 2019.

How have the seeds fared? There have been 58 MCT/GMCT championship games, and the top seed has won 27 times. The second seed has won 16 times. When it’s the No. 1 vs. the No. 2, The top seed is just 15-11 overall, and 9-6 in the GMC era. Overall, the top seed is 27-16 in the championship game.

No Double Vision: Colonia’s win over St. Thomas Aquinas in last year’s final snapped a two-season run of clean sweeps by the Trojans on the girls’ and boys’ side. There have been eight double champions in the GMC era – there were three in the MCT – but it won’t happen this year, with four different teams all showing up Friday night. That’s probably a boon for the attendance numbers, a welcome positive for the conference with more potential fans who could show up. And with three of them coming from large towns – Monroe, Piscataway and Colonia (a large section of mammoth Woodbridge Township) – the GMC should see some pretty good gate Friday night, and a potential capacity crowd.

Rock steady, but for how long? While the sports world has been in major upheaval the past few years – with NIL in college, NJSIAA power point changes, pitch clocks in Major League Baseball – the GMC has been no stranger. Many sports now have a main tournament and an “Invitational,” aimed at giving a chance to smaller schools to win a league title. But so far, basketball has remained mostly untouched. Save for a two-year pilot in the Red Division where teams played once through instead of twice, and the addition of a fifth Silver Division this year for the boys, the tournament has remained the same, a full bracket where everyone participates. (In our humble opinion, that fact – plus its rat-a-tat, one-game-seemingly-right-after-the-other nature – makes it the best basketball tournament in the state, hands down.) But these days that and more could all change at any time. Several leagues – notably, this year, the Skyland Conference – have adopted the NFHS-optional running clock rule, which begins over a 30-point differential in the second half, and only reverts to normal if the game gets within ten. And when the alignment committee meets soon, there could be a host of ideas on the table. One question up for debate: should division winners be guaranteed one of the top 12 seeds? It was eight until this year, when a fourth division was added. But there seems to be some interest in dropping that to 16 or more. But this year’s results were mixed. Blue Division winner Timothy Christian, knocked off a Red foe and pulled an upset in the 10-7 game, beating St. Joseph-Metuchen, 56-53, on the Falcons’ home floor. Gold champ Middlesex got the 11-seed and lost to 6-seed South Plainfield in the round of 16. But Silver winner Dunellen got the final guaranteed seed at 12, and was upset by 21-seed North Plainfield of the White Division, 66-53, in the preliminary round.

1-2, 1-2: Since the dawn of the GMC in 1986, this is the eighth time both the girls’ and boys’ title games have featured the 1 vs. the 2 seeds. The last time was in 2016m when the top-seeded St. Joe’s boys beat South Brunswick, and the 2nd-seeded East Brunswick girls beat Monroe. It also happened the year before, in 2015, when the second-seeded Colonia boys beat St. Joseph, and top-seed Piscataway topped Monroe on the girls’ side. Other double 1 vs. 2 years include 2010, 1998, 1994, 1992 and 1989.

How did we do? Remember right before the GMC Tournament seeding meeting, we made a mock bracket seeded alphabetically, the simulated the whole thing? Well, the results were mixed, leaning toward getting it right. Five of the eight teams we picked for the quarterfinals made it: Colonia, Piscataway, Sayreville, Old Bridge and South Plainfield. In the semis, we had two of the four teams. We had Piscataway over Old Bridge and Colonia over South Plainfield. We were close, with the Knights only getting knocked out by nine by St. Thomas, and South Plainfield losing by seven in overtime to Sayreville in the actual quarterfinals. But we got the finals right: Piscataway against Colonia. So, again we ask, do the seeds even matter if the same teams get to the finals?