Category: Girls Basketball

by Mike Pavlichko

Edison native, JP Stevens alum Dylan Brett gets call of a lifetime with Hofstra basketball’s run to the Big Dance

It all started for Dylan Brett when he was nine years old.

Edison Pop Warner couldn’t find anyone to do the public address during a game. Someone asked him.

He wound up calling every play, like it was on the radio, not just announcing who carried the ball or made the tackle.

It wasn’t quite the assignment, but the parents loved it, and it stuck.

Fast forward more than a decade, and the JP Stevens grad is at Hofstra University’s student radio station WRHU, one of the top college radio stations in the nation.

How it started, and how it’s going, as they say.

Brett was at the microphone just a few weeks ago, as the Flying Dutchmen won the CAA Tourney, on the call as they beat Monmouth in the final to earn the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. It was Hofstra’s first trip to March Madness in 25 years.

Now a senior, he recently called his final college basketball game, a loss to Alabama in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

But there could be plenty of college basketball games in his future. His Twitter post of the overtime game winner by Preston Edmead with just tenths of a second left has gone viral, leading to many connections he hopes will bear fruit soon after graduation.

An improbable run for a kid from Edison, remember that name Dylan Brett. Next time you hear him, it might be on ESPN.

Click below to hear Edison native Dylan Brett talk about getting his start behind a microphone, and his wild ride with the Hofstra men’s basketball team on campus radio station WRHU, with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko:

Edison native and JP Stevens grad Dylan Brett of WRHU Radio at Hofstra at the NCAA Tournament, as the team made its first appearance in 25 years. (Source: @DylanBrxtt on Twitter)
by Mike Pavlichko

Stellar sophomore campaign earns East Brunswick’s Ava Catanho CJSR GMC Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year

We get asked a lot about our process for naming a Player of the Year. It starts out that they have to be really good, of course, but there are a lot of very good ball players out there.

So, our next criteria is the value to their team. A team is just that, never one player, but sometimes, there’s one star who stands out, without whose contributions the success of that season might very well not have been possible.

For East Brunswick, that’s sophomore Ava Catanho.

Sure, senior Julianna DelosSantos-Branson had a huge impact, nearly averaging a double-double, with 64 steals, and no one really knew what she might be able to do this year coming off an ACL injury. Juniors Sophia Tannura and Zoey Alexio could hit the three, with 50 each. And sophomore Ave Krzywdzinski dished the ball to the tune of 161 assists with the best of them.

But without Catanho – the team’s top scorer with 543 points (18.7 per game) and a team-best 61 treys, and now a member of the 1,000 point club (at 1,011 and counting) – East Brunswick doesn’t reach the GMC Tournament finals, nor do the Lady Bears get to the CJ4 semis.

And for that reason, Catanho is our 2025-26 GMC Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.

Catanho also has the athletic lineage: her mother, Kara (nee Motusesky), is an assistant under Travis Retzlaff, who was named CJSR Coach of the Year in the GMC as well, and was a thousand-point scorer at East Brunswick when she was in high school. Her father is Alcides Catanho, a standout football player at Elizabeth and Rutgers who spent two seasons in the NFL with New England and Washington.

“I’ve been shooting since I was in the crib,” Ava says.

And she’s still going to be shooting for years to come.

Click below to listen to East Brunswick sophomore Ava Catanho – with additional comments from head coach Travis Retzlaff – with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko:

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

  • Jordan Barnes, St. Thomas Aquinas: Barnes finishes a four-year career in North Edison with 1,385 points and 746 rebounds, good for career averages of 11.6 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. This year, she averaged 16.2 points and 5.6 boards in helping lead STA to its record seventh straight GMC Tournament championship, and next year, she’ll be playing at Rider.
  • Trista Whitney, St. Thomas Aquinas: The senior – who played her first year at Edison – also has been a huge factor in the last three championship seasons for the Trojans. This year, she averaged 11.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game, and next year, will play at Maryland-Eastern Shore.
  • Angel Smith, Woodbridge: The senior was consistent for the Lady Barrons, scoring double figures in all but four games this year, while also registering 15 double-doubles. She hit for 15.7 points per game and 11.2 boards, helping Woodbridge flip the script this year, going 17-9 coming off a 6-19 campaign a year ago.
  • Layla Gutierrez, North Plainfield: Finishing her career with 1,289 points, the senior was one of the league’s most prolific scorers the last three seasons. She even dropped 50 in a GMC Tournament game this season against New Brunswick, less than a month after scoring 42 against South Brunswick. And she opened the season with 30 against a solid Piscataway team.
  • Gabrielle Hill, Spotswood: Though her scoring was down a tad from last year (15.4 to 13.8), the junior more than doubled her rebounding numbers from a year ago, grabbing 6.4 a game this year. She also got to the foul line 24 more times and hit 34 triples on the season for the Chargers.
Franklin Girls Basketball celebrates the Central Jersey Group 4 sectional title.
by Alec Crouthamel

Jimmy Kreie’s first-year success earns Franklin girls’ mentor CJSR’s Somerset County Girls’ Coach of the Year honors

Franklin girls’ basketball is a program built on tradition and plenty of winning, benchmarks set not too long ago in the 2010s. Former coach Audrey Taylor had the Warriors rolling, with four group state titles and two Tournament of Champions trophies, including the famed 34-0 2018-19 squad.

After a six-year hardware drought, Franklin brought back the shine that put the Warriors on the map across the state, under the leadership of first-year head coach Jimmy Kreie.

Following a run at Montclair Immaculate – capped by a Non-Public B title in the school’s final year of operation last season – Kreie headed south and took the job at Franklin.

All he and the Warriors did was reach the Somerset County Tournament final for the first time since 2019, and win a sectional title for the first time since 2020. They had to battle to do it, rallying from a nine-point deficit after three quarters in the Central Jersey Group 4 final against Hillsborough, and outscored the Raiders 22-2 in the final eight minutes.

Their season came to a close in the next round against eventual Group 4 champion Lenape, but the resounding success Franklin saw in Year One has earned Kreie Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Somerset County Girls’ Coach of the Year for the 2025-26 season.

Heading into his first year at the helm, Kreie had some familiarity with the Warriors’ roster — all but one player (Rutgers freshman forward PreciousGem Wheeler) remained from Montclair Immaculate’s 47-39 win over Franklin in December of 2024 — and had seen plenty of star junior forward Aleah Sunkins and sophomore guard Jamila McRiney from his work in the AAU ranks.

Franklin came out of the gates a bit slow with a 1-4 start, but not a single Warrior was fazed. That tied back to Kreie’s philosophy and message: These challenges will make us better.

Whether it was the victory over Gill St. Bernard’s in the Somerset County Tournament semifinals, or the comeback win over Hillsborough to win the sectional title, the program’s focus never wavered from the ultimate goal of development and gaining experience, while being around success.

Sunkins enjoyed a terrific season as a junior, averaging a 17-point, ten-rebound double-double per game while being held to single-digit points just twice. The team’s top seniors — guards Alissa Myers, Gianna Mattia, and Kayla Duncan — each had their own game-changing moments when the lights were brightest, and as Kreie put it after the sectional final, put the Warriors on the map.

Following the first breakout season, the future is bright as well. Sunkins will enter her senior campaign next year as one of the premier wings in the area. Kreie is not shy about his praise for rising juniors McRiney and Nola Bright, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. And there is more development to be had for some of the other underclassmen who may not have seen the most action on the floor, but have the talent to compete next season.

Add in a full community and administrative effort to support the program in droves — as Kreie raved about all season — and the Warriors appear to have put themselves squarely back in position as one of the area’s top teams.

Click below to hear Franklin head coach Jimmy Kreie talk about the 2025-26 season, the program’s future, and his coaching philosophy with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Alec Crouthamel:

by Alec Crouthamel

Addy Platt earns CJSR Somerset County Girls’ Player of the Year honors, while her Gill St. Bernard Knights are Team of the Year after sectional title win

Outside of Gladstone, New Jersey, it looked like the Gill St. Bernard’s girls basketball team may have been headed for a retooling year.

Five seniors graduated, and all played college basketball this season as freshmen at the next level. With a solid stable of underclassmen returning, there was a relative unknown with the Knights.

On campus, though, the belief never wavered, even dating back to the summer.

Gill St. Bernard’s proceeded to go 22-6 and win its first sectional title since 2012, making it all the way to Rutgers in the Non-Public B Final.

All that has earned the Knights Central Jersey Sports Radio Somerset County Team of the Year honors, with senior leader Addy Platt named Girls’ Player of the Year in Somerset.

After playing a smaller role in her junior year, Platt burst onto the scene as a senior. She stuffed the stat sheet, averaging 19.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 4.1 steals, and 2.3 blocks per game. The future Saint Joseph’s Hawk also consistently picked up the opposing team’s top option, while drawing the same assignment on the opposite side.

But championship teams aren’t made by just one player, even a star of Platt’s caliber.

A returning junior class that developed into a dangerous supporting cast propelled Gill into the Team of the Year conversation. Platt’s sister Katie, point guard Melina Miller, and wing Sadie Finn all took advantage of the opportunities in front of them, and altogether, the Knights took another leap forward into the state’s cream of the crop.

Add in an exciting stable of younger talent, and Gill St. Bernard’s won’t be going anywhere.

But for the 2025-26 iteration of the Knights, Platt’s do-it-all leadership and ability to take over games earned her the distinction as the top Player of the Year, and the collective earned Team of the Year.

Click below to hear Knights head coach Mark Gnapp and Platt talk about the 2025-26 season, and what the future holds for both Platt and Gill St. Bernard’s with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Alec Crouthamel:

Honorable Mentions:

  • Hailey Benbow, Rutgers Prep: There was no sophomore slump for Hailey Benbow, who averaged 13.1 points and 6.6 rebounds for the Argonauts, leading the team in both categories in her second season as a starter. She also sunk 25 triples on the year, and led a defensive-oriented squad with 60 steals.
  • Aleah Sunkins, Franklin: It may take five to play basketball, but the Warriors don’t get where they got this year – to the Somerset County Tournament final, and winning Central Jersey Group 4 – without Sunkins, a junior who averaged more than twice the next leading scorer, at 17.9 points per game. In fact, she averaged a double-double with 10.9 boards per contest, while also hitting 36 threes and tying for team-high honors in steals with Alissa Myers, at 62. A seniors, Myers will be gone next year, but Sunkins will remain the focal point next season.
  • Aletha Reynolds, Bernards: A double-double machine, with 16 during the season, Reynolds averaged 14.8 points and 10.5 rebounds per game. She helped the Mountaineers to a 10-0 start, and a trip to the North 2, Group 2 semis, where they lost to defending and eventual champion Madison. The senior will attend Catholic University in Washington, D.C. next fall.
  • Peytan Pugh, Bound Brook: Just a freshman, Peytan and Company nearly knocked off Rutgers Prep in the Somerset County Tournament semifinals, and reached the Central Jersey Group 1 title game. Why? Because she registered 254 steals, tops in New Jersey, nearly nine per game! A great focal point to build around for the Crusaders over the next three years!
  • Sadie Fleming, Manville: With 13 double-doubles this season, Sadie had another fantastic year to cap off a four-year varsity journey. She averaged 13.2 points and 9.8 rebounds per game – helping Manville to a school record 17 wins – finishing the her time with the Mustangs as rare member of the “Double 1K Club” – with 1,238 career points and 1,217 rebounds. Sadie is just the second girls’ player at Manville to crack a thousand, but holds the record for most rebounds in a career – by far! Fleming will attend Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania next year.
by Mike Pavlichko

East Brunswick’s Travis Retzlaff named CJSR GMC Girls’ Basketball Coach of the Year

First came the recognition from the league’s coaches, now from everyone else.

Or at least, in this case, Central Jersey Sports Radio, which has named East Brunswick’ Travis Retzlaff its GMC Girls’ Coach of the Year for 2025-26.

The Bears had a special season, winning 23 games, its best season since Keith Lane’s squad went 22-4 a decade ago and won the GMC Tournament championship.

This year, it was a second place finish in the Red National behind St. Thomas Aquinas, and a run to the GMC finals against the Trojans, who won their seventh straight.

But with a relatively young club – their biggest loss will be top rebounder Julianna DelosSantos-Branson – and standout Ava Catanho returning for her junior year, the Lady Bears should be well poised for success the next few seasons, perhaps even the league’s best shot to dethrone the Trojans.

To see a team without a lot of veterans do what East Brunswick did, getting the most out of a young squad – and keeping them composed in big games – takes a steady and patient coach, something that fits the bill for Retzlaff.

The Lady Bears also reached the Central Jersey Group 4 semifinals, falling to Hillsborough.

Click below to listen to Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with CJSR GMC Girls’ Coach of the Year Travis Retzlaff:

by Mike Pavlichko

Smooth sailing in winter championships welcome for NJSIAA, with more experiences at Rutgers to come

Someone will always complain about something – a seed, a snow day – but on the whole, things seemed to go quite swimmingly these last few weeks in the state tournaments for the NJSIAA.

After some hot controversies over the last couple of years, it’s welcome news.

There was Manasquan-Camden’s controversial ending in basketball two seasons ago, then the Anthony Knox wrestling saga last season. But the best news to come out of this week’s state championships – whether it was wrestling at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, or 12 state title basketball games at Rutgers – was that it was all about the champions.

NJSIAA Executive Director Collen Maguire was at Jersey Mike’s Arena in Piscataway Sunday for the last day of championships, after spending the last few days down in Atlantic City with the wrestling tournament. And nearly every official with the NJSIAA was nearly all smiles all weekend.

No pointed questions from reporters, no challenges working its way through the courts. The way it should be.

About the biggest challenge for the NJSIAA was dealing with a massive winter snowstorm a couple of weeks ago as the basketball tournament got underway. Originally slated to begin on Tuesday, February 24th with the opening round for public schools in Groups 2 and 4, the blizzard not only postponed those games, but also the opening round for Group 1 and 3 publics on Wednesday.

The NJSIAA smartly had enough breaks baked into the schedule, and it simply moved those days – and the sectional quarterfinal rounds – back two days. Some didn’t like it, and would have preferred to play on time, but the move essentially allowed referee assignments to stay the same, and keep everyone on the same track, rather than having some teams play earlier and have more of a break before the next round. It was the most fair and equitable decision it could make.

And the state athletic association even adjusted is non-public game sites on the fly when some teams – like St. Joseph-Metuchen and St. Peter’s Prep, which are designated Non-Public “South A” schools – had quite the distance to travel. St. Peter’s is in Jersey City, for example, and was faced with traveling far past the home court of its lower-seeded opponent.

Add to all that, a few years into Maguire’s tenure leading the state athletic association, the NJSIAA isn’t sitting still on its championships. A few years ago, she brokered a deal to keep all the state championships in basketball at Rutgers, a central location in the state, rather than have some there, and others down at the RWJBarnabas Arena in Toms River.

It’s a great facility, but it’s not Rutgers, and it just doesn’t have the same cachet. The NJSIAA says it wants a world-class experience for its student-athletes, and Rutgers is it. Plus, it’s as Central a location as you could get.

Sure, some will complain about the price of parking. But those things come with having such a big event. Is $20 really that bad when you can stay and watch four great high school basketball games over eight hours? That’s about $2.50 an hour, maybe a bit more than your average parking meter.

Back in late January, the NJSIAA announced it would move its baseball finals from picturesque Veterans’ Park in Hamilton to Bainton Field at Rutgers, right across from Jersey Mike’s Arena. The park was beautiful, but as the NJSIAA has said, it simply outgrew the park, which had limited parking, a curfew (that provided a controversy of its own last year over a long-running game that had to be suspended and picked up the next day, no tarp (which led to games frequently being rescheduled), and scant cell service that often forced reporters to file stories from their cars, where there could maybe get one more bar – or one at all – on their mobile hotspots.

On Saturday, after the state Group 4 final, we ventured over to see the new facility, which actually is more impressive than any picture released online has even shown.

Brand-new elevated bleachers wrap around from beyond both dugouts, with 400 seat-back chairs directly behind the plate, and a new press-box replaces the antiquated one that used to sit at field level behind home plate, now with plenty of room inside and out for media.

Some of the credit goes to Rutgers here, too. The baseball move happened on the watch of new Athletic Director Keli Zinn, who only began the job last summer, and was hired by similarly-new University President William Tate. They seem to understand the value of having such events on campus.

Even the Greater Middlesex Conference has had discussions with Zinn, and we hear at least one of the topics was to bring the basketball championship doubleheader back to RU. The county finals had been held there for decades, predating the formation of the GMC for the 1985-86 season. (In fact, the first live basketball game this reporter ever attended was the 1984 Middlesex County Tournament final, at age six, when St. Peter’s of New Brunswick beat St. Joe’s-Metuchen in the final.

But the GMC moved to Middlesex County College in 2019 and 2020, citing cost issues at Rutgers. And after COVID, the league began holding the semifinals and finals all at Monroe Township High School, where it has remained since.

But with all due respect, what sounds better as a preseason mantra? “We want to make it to Monroe” or “We want to make it to Rutgers?”

by Mike Pavlichko

After hustling for four varsity seasons, Rutgers Prep’s Ava LaMonica reflects on her time as an Argonaut, and finishing on top in Somerset County

The 2024-25 girls’ basketball season hurt for Rutgers Prep, and then-junior Ava LaMonica. There was no division title – at least not outright – they got knocked out of the Somerset County Tournament by her hometown public school of Hillsborough, and lost to eventual Non-Public B group champion Gloucester Catholic in the South B finals.

That wasn’t want LaMonica was used to her first two years at the Somerset school.

But with everyone back, the team rededicated itself to its goals, and in the end, got two out of three.

Rutgers Prep finished as the No. 1 team in Central Jersey, in the Bellamy & Son Paving final rankings, as the Argonauts went 25-4, won the Skyland Conference Delaware Division with a 6-0 record, and beat Franklin in the Somerset County Tournament title game.

That makes it three county titles, three outright division titles, one shared, and two sectional championships in four years for LaMonica, who – along with Cali McCoy off the bench – is the only four-year Rutgers Prep varsity player to graduate this year.

She finishes as a member of the thousand-point, 500-rebound club, scoring 1,132 points and grabbing 527 rebounds over her career, and laid it all out there every time she was on the court, fighting for rebounds, diving after loose balls, and deflecting passes by the opposition to get the Argonauts out in transition.

And if she’s hasn’t had enough of the snow this winter, she’ll see plenty more most likely when she takes her talents to the University at Buffalo next year.

Click below to hear Rutgers Prep senior Ava LaMonica talk about the 2025-26 season, the Argonauts return as Somerset County Tournament champions, and her time spent alongside great players and head coach Mary Klinger:

by Mike Pavlichko

Rutgers Prep girls, back on top in Somerset County, are No. 1 team in Final Bellamy & Son Paving rankings

Sure, the Rutgers Prep girls’ basketball team won 20 games last year, but it still wasn’t up to Mary Klinger’s standards. The coach calls the regular season the “preseason.” A division title is nice, but the county and state tournaments are the goals. Win those, and it’s a good year for the Argonauts. In 2025, they won neither.

But this year, with much of the same crew back, the Argonauts returned to their familiar spot as Somerset County Tournament champions, and finish the year No. 1 in the Bellamy & Son Paving Girls’ Basketball Top Ten.

Led by four-year varsity standout Ava LaMonica – the team’s top scorer, who will be playing collegiately next year at Buffalo – as well as fellow seniors Ava Frith and Sophia Georgiades, as well as super sophomore Hailey Benbow – the Argos’ second-best scorer and top rebounder – Rutgers Prep (25-4) didn’t lose a single conference game this season, its three regular season losses coming to Red Bank Catholic, Cardinal O’Hara (PA), and Blair right before the state tournament. Their fourth came to Gloucester Catholic in the Non-Public South B Final.

Prep beat Franklin – the eventual Central Jersey Group 4 champ – in the Somerset County Final, and won the Skyland Division title with a 6-0 record.

Gill St. Bernard’s checks in at No. 2. With a 22-6 mark, the Knights won the Non-Public North B title with a victory over Saddle River Day, then lout to Gloucester Catholic in the state Non-Public Group B final at Rutgers, the same Rams’ team that beat Rutgers Prep in the semifinals. Gill lost its only meeting with Rutgers Prep this season, 51-44 in late January, in a game heard on Central Jersey Sports Radio.

Finishing third is St. Thomas Aquinas (24-7). The Trojans – with the senior trio of Jordan Barnes, Trista Whitney and Kayla Navarro – blew through the GMC this season, going 11-0 to win the Red American Division, and stormed to their seventh straight GMC Tournament championship, beating resurgent East Brunswick in the final. They would bow out to eventual state champion Red Bank Catholic in the Non-Public South A semifinals.

Checking in at four is Franklin (22-9). A Somerset County Tournament finalist under first-year head coach Jimmy Kreie, the Warriors returned to their former – and fairly recent – glory with a win in the Central Jersey Group 4 title game over neighboring Hillsborough. They were knocked out of the state tournament by Lenape in the state Group 4 finals.

Fifth is Hillsborough (21-7). The Raiders had won two sectional titles in a row – in North 2, Group 4 in 2024 and Central 4 last season – but fell at Franklin in the Central Jersey Group 4 title game.

East Brunswick checks in at No. 6 with a 23-6 record. Ava Catanho and Julianna DelosSantos-Branson led the Bears back to prominence this season, as they got to the GMC Tournament title game, where they lost to now seven-time reigning GMCT champion St. Thomas Aquinas.

Bound Brook (25-4) – re-ignited by freshman sensation Peytan Pugh – finishes at No. 7, thanks to a Mountain Division championship, going 8-0 in divisional play. They nearly knocked off Rutgers Prep in the Somerset County Tournament semifinals, and reached the Central Jersey Group 1 title game, falling on the road to top-seed New Providence.

Finishing eighth is Bernards (24-5), which started the year 10-0, and was the Skyland Conference Valley Division champion at 11-1. They lost to defending champion Madison in the North 2, Group 2 semifinals.

At No. 9, it’s Colonia. After a down season, head coach Jill Bachonski has the Patriots looking solid, finishing 20-4, and going 8-0 to win the GMC Red National Division. They reached the GMC Tournament semifinals, falling to eventual champion St. Thomas Aquinas.

And No. 10 is Piscataway, making its season debut in the final rankings of the year. The Lady Chiefs finished 17-9, and went 6-0 to win the White American Division title, reaching the GMC Tournament semifinals, where they lost to East Brunswick.

Below are the complete final Bellamy & Son Paving Girls’ Basketball Top Ten rankings for 2025-26:

by Mike Pavlichko

INSTANT REPLAY – Non-Public B Final (Girls): Gloucester Catholic 62, Gill St. Bernard’s 39

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.

by Mike Pavlichko

INSTANT REPLAY – Group 4 Semifinals (Girls): Lenape 54, Franklin 35

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.