The Monroe Falcons girls’ basketball team had lost twice to South Brunswick this year, and the third time turned out to be the charm.

A semifinal win over the Vikings Saturday morning – on the road, mind you – now has them in the Central Jersey Group 4 title game against another somewhat familiar foe. They’ll take on defending champion Jackson Memorial, a team they don’t play all too frequently, but which knocked them out of the CJ4 bracket in last year’s semifinals.

Everyone remembers, and you know how things go in the state tournament.

Monroe is 17-9 this season, fairly on par with last year’s 18-6 campaign. Jackson is 20-9 under head coach Rachel Goodale – the sister of Rutgers wrestling coach Scott Goodale – also about where they were last year.

So how do things go in the state tournament?

Well, when the third-seeded Falcons beat 2-seed South Brunswick on Saturday, they probably figured they should hire a bus just down the road to Hightstown, the top-seed, for Monday night. But as it turns out, the Jaguars upset the Rams, 61-44 Saturday, leaving Monroe as the higher seed, and thus hosting a title game for the first time since 2016. They won CJ4 that year, too, beating Hunterdon Central before losing to South 4 champ Lenape in the group semifinals.

The Falcons have only one player scoring in double figures on the season, and don’t go terribly deep, but their starting five all averages at least seven-and-a-half points a game. Junior Halley Cottrell leads with 11.8 per contest, though it’s sophomore Evangelina Francisco who has really come on in the NJSIAA Tournament.

Of her five highest games the entire season, the last three in the states all figure into that mix, including a career-best 26 – her only 20-plus point game ever – in the semifinals against South Brunswick. She’s averaging 12.7 points a game in the playoffs.

No other Falcon has more than one 10-plus point game in the last three. But they really haven’t had to, and Francisco will look to continue the hot hand.

But in all, the lineup is steadied by two seniors – Haley Higgins and Katie Louro – who have been starters all four years in high school, and have been a part of 71 total victories in that span, an enormous feat considering 2021 was shortened by COVID.

Click below to hear Mike Pavlichko talk with Monroe seniors Haley Higgins and Katie Louro:

As for Jackson, they’ve had a similar season to last year, record-wise. They made it through the preliminary round of the Shore Conference Tournament – an invitational, not an automatic qualifier tourney like the GMC – with a win over Monmouth, before getting bounced by St. Rose of Belmar in the first round. They were 8-2 in the Shore A South division, finishing second to Toms River North. But the Mariners were bounced from South 4 in the semifinals by Lenape.

Senior Zoie Maffei is the top scorer, at 18.2 points a game, and fellow senior Chloe Messer is right behind at 13.7. And they have a little more height than Monroe, which could present some matchup problems.

In the 61-44 semifinal win over Hightstown, the Jags got a double-double from Maffei – 12 points and 10 rebounds – while another senior, Kamile Makselyte – added 18 points and 12 boards.