Despite a 20-point game from Penn-bound senior Ethan Lin, Central 4 champion Montgomery lost 49-40 to North 2, Group 4 Champion Plainfield in the NJSIAA state Group 4 title game. It was Plainfield’s second straight state championship.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from Rutgers University’s Jersey Mike’s Arena in Piscataway on March 14, 2026.
North 2, Group 3 champion Colonia got 27 points from sophomore Jayce Rodriguez – including 14-of-14 from the foul line, all in the second half – and another 20 from senior Dylan Chiera, as the Patriots beat North 1, Group 3 champion Montville in the Group 3 state semifinals. The win sends Colonia to the state Group 3 finals for the first time ever, where they will take on Ocean City at Rutgers.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from the Dunn Center in Elizabeth on March 11, 2026.
The Montgomery boys’ basketball team felt good about its chances coming into Saturday afternoon’s NJSIAA Group 4 state final at Rutgers, and they had plenty of reason to.
All season long, they have gotten outstanding performances from different players every night, with Ethan Lin running the show, Shriyans Mallavarapu blocking shots, Xavier Harrigan coming off the bench to play lock down defense, and Connor Benedict and Mike Simborski connecting from beyond the arc.
And they got that again, with the teams playing a tight first three quarters. Plainfield led 13-9 after one, with the second quarter seeing the lead change four times. It was 22-20 Cardinals at the half.
Whenever it looked like Plainfield was going to pull away, Monty would hit a big shot, whether it was a buzzer-beating three at the end of the first to trim a five-point deficit to two, or Simborksi from the college range on the left wing at the third-quarter horn to slash a seven-point deficit to four.
But the matchup zone defense of Plainfield caused Monty headaches all night, and by late in the game, their long possessions were stretching longer, and with a few misses, The Cards won the rebounding battle in the second half. It was tied 11-11 at the break, but the Cougars were left with a lot of one and dones, and they had a 12-5 advantage on the glass over the last 16 minutes.
And the exclamation mark was a thunderous one-handed jam by Gordon, streaking to the basked from the left wing on a break off a pretty feed from Kamai Lowery with 4:26 left. If it didn’t mathematically put the game out of reach, everyone in the building could sense that it was a harbinger of the celebration that would come when the clock finally winked down to :00.
Lin finished with 20 in the game – including four treys, and two in the fourth quarter – tied for game-high honors with Gordon, a junior who is uncommitted, but has offers from Tennessee, Mississippi State and North Carolina state, among others. Lin, meanwhile, in his last game as a Cougar, will be headed down to The Palestra to play for Penn.
Senior Kamai Lowery finished with 12 for Plainfield (26-5), while fellow senior Rashawn Williams added ten, including a pair of triples.
Sophomore Connor Benedict finished with nine for Montgomery (26-5), while Mallavarapu had six, but all were in the first half.
Click below for postgame reaction from Alec Crouthamel with head coach Kris Grundy, presented by Sportsplext at Metuchen:
The Colonia boys’ basketball program made history Wednesday night, but there’s still some more ink in the pen, and more to write.
The Patriots’ 67-57 win over Montville sent them to the state finals for the first time ever. And now, a program that has won eleven sectional trophies – six of which have come under current head coach Jose Rodriguez – will look to claim its first state championship when it plays Sunday in the NJSIAA Group 3 final at Rutgers University’s Jersey Mike’s Arena in Piscataway.
They’ll take on Ocean City at 2 pm, in a game you can hear live on Central Jersey Sports Radio. Pregame starts at 1:45 with Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel on the call. Click here to listen.
Colonia comes in at 21-10, with their season trajectory well-documented. They won just two of their first eight games, but are 19-4 since, their last two defeats coming right before the state tournament. After losing so much off-season talent, including two-time GMC Tournament MVP Aiden Derkack, R.J. Wortman and Zach Smith, it took a little while to figure out roles and adjust to the changes.
To say they “figured it out” might be the understatement of the year, as they eventually earned the top-seed in North Jersey, Section 2, Group 3, then four games later claimed their fifth straight sectional title.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about their semifinal win over Montville was not the 27 points Jayce Rodriguez – the team’s top scorer – poured in, or they early lead they built that they never lost the rest of the way, or even the outstanding effort from Nfa Clyne with an 11-point four-rebound night.
No, it was probably the fact the Patriots went 22-of-24 from the foul line, including 13-of-15 in the fourth quarter as the Mustangs attempted to come back. Of those, Jayce Rodriguez went 8-for-8 in the final quarter, and his last 14 points came from the foul line.
All that spells a team that knows the game, and knows the plan: draw contact, get to the line, score.
It was the kind of all-around team effort that maybe wasn’t happening in those first eight games, but certainly has been since.
Ocean City is a very similar team. The Red Raiders come in at 25-6, 9-3 in their Cape-Atlantic League American Division, which got them a second place finish behind Middle Township. They were a CAL Tournament finalist, falling by one to Atlantic City in the title game.
And while they may not have won five straight sectional titles like Colonia has, they have played in big games.
Ocean City won South Jersey Group 4 last year before tragedy struck in the state semifinals against Colts Neck. Senior point guard Ben McGonigle was injured early on and couldn’t return. The Red Raiders built a lead, and were up ten with two minutes to go in the third, but lost by two, 47-45.
So, just like Colonia, they know the hurt of just missing a state final.
It can be a different player for Ocean City every night. Senior forward Josh Lenko was the one who came up big in a 56-43 win over Central 4 winner Westhampton Tech in the state semifinals. A 14 point-per-game scorer on the season, he dumped in 30 points and hit six treys in the state semifinals Wednesday night, and as coach John Bruno said afterward, “you wouldn’t necessarily have prepared for that.”
The team’s top scorer is Luke Tjoumakaris, who’s averaging around 15 points a game all season, and in the states. The senior is a tough scorer around the rim, while senior Tighe Olek who averages xi points – “does the dirty work,” according to Bruno, drawing the opposition’s best defender.
And then there’s Bruno, a veteran coach who’s been at Ocean City for 37 years, and has won over 500 games in America’s Greatest Family Resort town. He’ll be pacing the sideline at Jersey Mike’s in
Click below for preview interviews with both head coaches and Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko:
Quirky/Useless Stat of the Day: While this will be Ocean City’s first game at Rutgers, Colonia has been there before, most recently playing in the 2018 GMC Tournament final. That was the last season under former standout Brandon Hall as head coach, and the tournament has since moved on to play the finals at other league venues. But maybe not for long. GMC officials recently met with new Rutgers Athletic Director Keli Zinn, and it’s possible – like how the NJSIAA recently struck a deal to hold all its state basketball finals at Rutgers, and recently announced baseball finals will be held there, too – that the tourney could come back to the “RAC” in the near future.
LINKS TO PREVIOUS COLONIA STATE TOURNAMENT COVERAGE:
If you ever want this reporter to go down a rabbit hole, ask him a question he doesn’t know the answer to.
Then again, sometimes you don’t even have to ask.
The Gill St. Bernard’s boys’ basketball team won its first-ever state title Thursday night when the Knights beat Holy Cross Prep of Delran 39-28 at Jersey Mike’s Arena at Rutgers University, and may have made a little history in the process besides picking up that first state championship trophy.
We looked back through the record books, and the 28 points allowed was the lowest scored in a state non-public final since at least 2011, when South B champion Cardinal McCarrick of South Amboy (now closed) lost to powerhouse and North B champ St. Anthony of Jersey City, 75-28 in the Non-Public B Final. No one else has allowed fewer points dating back to the 2000 championships.
That Friar squad finished that season 33-0, with a 61-49 win over Plainfield in the now-defunct Tournament of Champions final.
St. Anthony would go on to play its final season six years later, as the school closed in the summer of 2017 with a record 13 TOC wins. Plainfield, which also lost to the Friars in a rematch in 2012, will face Montgomery Saturday afternoon in the Group 4 finals, a rematch of a game they won 65-48. You can hear that game live at 2 pm, with pregame at 1:40 with Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel; click here to listen.
The game also was the lowest combined score of any non-public/parochial final in the last 25 seasons in which group finals were held. The emerging COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 ended up truncating the NJSIAA state tournament before the non-public finals could be held, and there were no state playoffs at all the following season, in 2021.)
Gill St. Bernard’s led Holy Cross 20-2 at the half, though the Lancers rallied to cut it to six points and a two-possession game, at one point in the fourth quarter, with the Knights pulling away at the end.
The combined 67 points beat out the second-lowest scoring game since 2020, a 38-35 win for Union Catholic over St. Peter’s Prep in the Non-Public A final in 2023, with a combined 73 points scored between the teams.
Scores that low are rare in games where a lot of offensive firepower tends to rule the day. In that time span, only seven of 50 non-public finals saw combined scores under 100, with three of them coming since COVID. In 2024’s Non-Public A final, Don Bosco Prep beat Paul VI 56-29, a combined score of 85, and the second fewest points allowed in a final since 2000.
For the “record”…
With the win, Gill St. Bernard’s finished the 2025-26 season on a 24-game win streak, tying what is believed to have been the longest win streak in school history, or at least its longest since becoming a member of the NJSIAA in 2004-05. The 2010-11 team finished 26-3, and won its last 24 games after a 2-2 start that includes losses to St. Anthony and St. Benedict’s.
While those Knights won the Somerset County Tournament championship – their first of ten, now tied for that mark with Bridgewater-Raritan after this season’s win – they bowed out in the sectional semifinals of the state tournament to St. Patrick of Elizabeth, 69-41.
In the lowest scoring game in a non-public state final in at least 27 years, North B champion Gill St. Bernard’s topped South B champ Holy Cross Prep 39-38 to win its first-ever state title. Sophomore Connor Junker finished with 14 points in the win, while senior Dorsett Mulcahy added 13, and Prosper Sonkua had four blocks.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from Jersey Mike’s Arena at Rutgers University in Piscataway on March 12, 2026.
North champion The Gill St. Bernard’s girls’ basketball team got a combined 28 points from the Platt sisters – 15 from senior Addy, and 13 from junior Kaity – in a 62-39 loss to South champ Gloucester Catholic in the Non-Public Group B state final. It was the second straight and second overall title for the Rams.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from Jersey Mike’s Arena at Rutgers University in Piscataway on March 12, 2026.
At the end of the day, throw the seeds out, and just look at where the two teams playing in Saturday’s Group 4 state boys’ basketball title game rank statewide.
Montgomery was a three-seed in its Central Jersey Group 4 playoff section, and had to go on the road to beat top-seed Hillsborough in overtime to win it. Plainfield was a four-seed in North 2, Group 4 and had to travel to beat a higher seed as well – Linden, the two – to win the title.
But these are not your typical three- and four-seeds. Montgomery is the tenth-ranked team in the state, per NJ.com, with Plainfield five spots ahead. They are No. 1 and No. 2 when you take out the non-publics.
And quite truthfully, that’s more like it.
But no matter how you slice it, whoever is inside Jersey Mike’s Arena at Rutgers Saturday when Montgomery (26-4) and Plainfield (25-5) play for the Group 4 title in a rematch of last year’s title game should get every single penny of their dollar’s worth.
You can hear that game live on Central Jersey Sports Radio – for free, with no paywall – beginning with the pregame show, set for 1:40 pm with Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel. Click here to listen.
The Cougars have it going on all cylinders right now, and have been well-tested in the state tournament. After a blowout win over Manalapan in the opening round of the sectionals, they earned a ten-point win over Trenton, then went on the road and won back-to-back games: by 12 at Marlboro and 55-47 in OT at neighboring Hillsborough to take home their third straight sectional title, and fourth overall, all of which have come under current head coach Kris Grundy.
And he has a more than capable team.
It starts with Ethan Lin, the Penn-bound senior point guard who runs the show, in every sense of the word. Through the sectional finals, he had poured in 25, 31, 30 and 22 points, but one might be prompted to wonder how he was held to just nine in the Group 4 semis against Cherry Hill.
Watch the game, and you’ll know. Lin has an uncanny ability to know when he has to score, and when he doesn’t. He’ll gladly concede 20 points off his game to let someone else have them if that means Montgomery wins.
And that’s what he did against Cherry Hill East Tuesday night. He kept feeding the ball to two sophomores, Mike Simborski and Shriyans Mallavarapu. Simborski finished with 28, three shy of a career high, while Mallavarapu topped his previous best of 16 points with 23, while he also grabbed 12 rebounds and said “no” to a number of layup attempts by the other team named the Cougars.
But those three are just the start. Connor Benedict – always busy making deflections and stealing the ball – also can light it up from three. And then there’s the literal “X” factor off the bench, junior Xavier Harrigan, a multi-sport athlete who recorded 49 tackles last year – 41 solo – from his spot in the secondary.
Monty has four losses all year: twice to Rutgers Prep – once in the regular season and once in the Somerset County Tournament – once to North 2, Group 4 finalist Linden, and once to newly-minted Non-Public Group B state champion Gill St. Bernard’s.
Not bad at all.
On the Plainfield side, the Cardinals won’t win 30 games again this year – they finished 29-3 last season – but are still among the top public schools in the state
Micah Gordon – an uncommitted junior with his biggest offers from Tennessee and Mississippi State, among others – is the top dog (bird?) for the Cards. The point guard is averaging a shade under 25 points a game on the season, and he’ll eclipse the 2,000-point mark in his career very early next season/later in 2026, already sitting at 1,821 points.
He’s scoring at a 24.4 point per game clip in the state playoffs, where – even more impressive, in a dominating win over Linden – he had perhaps his finest moment in the tournament: 33 points, seven assists, three treys, and something you rarely see at any level of basketball: 14-of-16 from the foul line.
Then three of the next four top scorers – seniors Rashawn Williams, Devin Thomas, and Kamai Lowery – are, like Montgomery’s Harrigan – football players, and bring a unique dynamic to a team that plays in the rugged Union County Conference.
Williams and another senior, Tylor Hunter, are the team’s top rebounders, while Gordon and Thomas have each hit 48 triples on the year.
With two point guards who can take over the game at any time, this one might be as entertaining for the offensive exploits of those on the floor as it is watching each side’s defense try to contain the other side.
Click below for preview interviews with both head coaches:
Quirky/Useless Stat of the Day: Montgomery is 2-0 against teams whose schools start with the letter C. Ironically, both are named “Cougars.” They had a 72-32 win over the Central Jersey College Charter Cougars on January 30th, and beat the Cherry Hill East Cougars Tuesday in the Group 4 semifinals, 67-57.
LINKS TO PREVIOUS MONTGOMERY STATE TOURNAMENT COVERAGE:
Central 4 champion Franklin couldn’t find its shot, and fell to South 4 champion Lenape 54-35 in the state Group 4 semifinals. The Warriors were led by Nola Bright, who narrowly missed a double-double with ten points and nine rebounds.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from Deptford High School on March 10, 2026.
Central 4 champion Montgomery got a career high 23 points and some big blocks from Shriyans Mallavarapu and a game-high 28 points from Mike Simborski – both sophomores – as the Cougars beat South 4 champion Cherry Hill East in the Group 4 state semifinals. The win sends Montgomery back to the state Group 4 championship game against Plainfield for the second year in a row.
Click below to listen to Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel call all the play-by-play from Deptford High School on March 10, 2026.
