Bound Brook seeks first state title since 2020 run was cut short by COVID, as Crusaders travel to New Providence for Saturday morning CJ1 final

The last time Bound Brook girls’ basketball team won a sectional title – or was even in the finals – was in the 2019-20 basketball season.

That season didn’t end well, even though the Crusaders followed up their Central Jersey Group 1 title game win over neighboring Middlesex with a state semifinal win over Woodbury. The COVID pandemic was just starting in the U.S., but that game was played, even as college basketball was beginning to shut down. Hours earlier, the Big Ten cancelled its tournament, 14 minutes before Rutgers and Michigan were set to tip off.

For the first time since, the Crusaders (25-3) are back in the final, and second-seed Bound Brook will visit top-seed and defending champion New Providence (27-1) in the Central Jersey Group 1 final. Game time is set for 11 am, and you can her it on Central Jersey Sports Radio with Mike Pavlichko calling all the action. Pregame is set for 10:45; click here to listen.

Bound Brook has taken just three losses all season, all highly respectable. After a 4-0 start, they lost to Union Catholic in the finale of their own Crusader Classic over the holidays. They won their next 17 games before falling to Rutgers Prep in the Somerset County Tournament semifinals, 55-49, then after a win at Edison, lost at Gill St. Bernard’s, 76-54.

While Union Catholic was knocked out of the Non-Public South A semifinals, Prep and Gill are top seeds in their respective playoff sections, and will be playing for titles Monday night; Prep in South B against Gloucester Catholic at Lenape H.S., and the Knights against Saddle River Day at JFK Paterson.

Peytan Pugh has been perhaps most responsible for the Crusaders’ surge this year. Just a freshman who head coach Jen Derevjanik jokes “was probably born with a basketball in the womb” and says “could have played for us as a seventh grader,” Pugh is the team’s top scorer at 18.8 points per game, and leads the state with a whopping 27 steals.

Senior Ti’asjah Ferguson is the Crusaders’ only other double-digit scorer, averaging 12.8 a game, while junior Lauren Polakiewicz leads the team with 56 triples, and was instrumental in Bound Brook’s comeback win over sixth-seed Roselle Park in the semifinals Wednesday night, hitting big threes down the stretch.

The Crusaders rallied from a 17-2 first quarter deficit to take a double-digit halftime lead, and never looked back. They will want to avoid that Saturday.

That’s because New Providence is quite good. (Yes, that’s an understatement.) The defending sectional champs’ lone loss is to Old Tappan (21-6), which will play Saturday afternoon at Teaneck in the North 1, Group 3 title game.

Both teams can score, with New Providence averaging 53.2 points per game, allowing 35.3. Bound Brook scores at a 57.5 point clip, while allowing 38.7. The numbers are starkly similar.

And so is the style of play. Cap Pazdera – in his 21st year at the helm for the Pioneers – says that just like Bound Brook, they like to get up and down the floor.

Four seniors are in the starting lineup, led by Annie Conover at 18.6 points per game and 8.6 rebounds, tops in both categories. Megan Henn is scoring 10.5 a game and leads the squad with 59 treys, while Haley Kessler is scoring 8.3. Senior Ava Kelly also starts, with just one sophomore in the group: Addy Fitzgerald, averaging 8.3 a game.

Click below to hear New Providence coach Cap Pazdera talk about the Pioneers’ and Saturday’s Central Jersey Group 1 final against Bound Brook:

Click below to hear Bound Brook head coach Jen Derevjanik and freshman Peytan Pugh’s postgame comments after Wednesday’s semifinal win over Roselle Park: