Tag: Team of the Year

by Mike Pavlichko

From 6-16 to GMC Tournament champs, rejuvenated St. Joseph-Metuchen named CJSR Boys’ Basketball Team of the Year

A year ago, St. Joseph boys’ basketball was a mess. Karl Towns, Sr. – the father of Falcon great Karl-Anthony Towns, who brought the Metuchen school a Tournament of Champions title in 2014 – was on his way out after a disastrous 6-16 season, where he barely coached the team, and seemed to spend more time watching his famous son play at Madison Square Garden after being traded from Minnesota to the Knicks.

Oh, how things changed quickly.

St. Joseph went with a known commodity: Mark Taylor, a 1983 graduate who later coached Jay Williams and Andrew Bynum and won two GMC titles in his first go-round, then later coached at Ridge and St. Benedict’s Prep.

He brought in key transfers, including Aidan Carter from nearby St. Thomas Aquinas, Andrew Kretkowski from Rutgers Prep, and Joel Patrick from Union, among others. The last two played right away, but Carter had to sit 30 days due to NJSIAA transfer rules.

A beautifully-voiced singer once told us it’s “never as good as the first time,” but this one proved the exception to the rule.

The Falcons won their first 16 games before taking a loss, a 55-54 defeat on the road at South Plainfield. It prompted a nearly 45-minute postgame meeting in the visiting lockerroom, but Taylor later called it the best thing that could have happened to his team.

It must have been, because they won their next 13 games, too – blitzing through the GMC Tournament to win the championship, making it all the way to Jackson for the Non-Public South A finals, where they eventually lost to St. Peter’s Prep, a juggernaut that beat five different Central Jersey Sports Radio-area squads this year.

And while they may not have finished the year No. 1 – that went to Gill St. Bernard’s, which won its division, county tournament, state sectional and first-ever state championship – the Falcons’ turnaround and league title earns Team of the Year honors from Central Jersey Sports Radio.

By the way, the Falcons aren’t done yet. Who knows what Taylor has up his sleeve for next year, with Alijah Muprhy the biggest senior graduation, as the core of Kretkowksi, Carter and Patrick will return.

Click below to hear from Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Boys’ Basketball Team of the Year, including juniors Aidan Carter and Andrew Kretkowski, along with head coach Mark Taylor:

by Mike Pavlichko

Phillipsburg Stateliners repeat as sectional champs, No. 1 in Bellamy & Son Paving Top Ten in 2025… and once again are Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Big Central Team of the Year

Everyone knows the Phillipsburg mystique, but Frank Duffy prefers to call it “the standard.” The measuring stick by which all Stateliner teams are judged.

That stick has 758 marks on it, one for every win the program has, the most in New Jersey history, spread across 120 years of football that sometimes has taken them to Pennsylvania, more often here at home in the Garden State, and – like next year – will see a mix of Pennsy and Jersey schools on the schedule.

But in 2025, after losing key contributors like Jett Genovese, Matthew Scerbo Jr., and Felix Matos to graduation, Phillipsburg barely skipped a beat.

They went into the playoffs at 7-1, their lone loss coming to St. Joseph-Metuchen. In the last two years, they’ve lost to just one New Jersey pubic school (Ridge last season).

And with three playoff wins, they took the North 2, Group 4 title with ease, starting with a 55-14 joke of a blowout win against a horribly over-matched eight-seed in Newark Central, then a 35-7 win over Colonia, and a 41-21 victory over Montgomery to claim their second straight state sectional title.

For that, Phillipsburg is crowned – once again, for a second straight year – Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Team of the Year.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Phillipsburg head coach Frank Duffy, and seniors Sam Dech and Aedan Hywel about their 2025 season:

by Mike Pavlichko

Middlesex seniors Dom Parenti, Owen Reynolds on Blue Jays’ seventh Group 1 title, CJSR Team of the Year honors for state champs

The Middlesex Blue Jays baseball program has won seven state titles in its history, all since 1990, and five of them have come since 2013. Only one team – Gloucester Catholic, with six – has won more in that span.

There are a lot of reasons for that. Besides skilled players, there’s great coaching, and a great community behind them.

Consider that the only two starting pitchers Middlesex used in their entire six-game state tournament run also had brothers who played on the 2021 team. That includes Chris Kozak and his older brother Aidan, as well as Dominic Long and his older brother Anthony.

Whose team was better? Well, we didn’t want to put anyone on the spot about that.

But we did talk to two of the team’s four seniors, two who played some pretty big roles, about this 2025 championship season, and how it all played out. One will play baseball in college, the other won’t, but both were instrumental in the Blue Jays’ success.

WATCH SENIOR SENDOFF MESSAGES FROM ALL FOUR MIDDLESEX SENIORS – SPONSORED BY EXACT RF BROADCAST & WIRELESS OF MIDDLESEX – ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL!

Dom Parenti will be playing baseball at Kean next season. He hit .352 this season with two home runs – including one against Schalick in the group semifinals last week – and 16 runs batted in. Parenti finished his high school career as a .340 hitter with 47 RBI and 43 stolen bases.

Owen Reynolds will be going to Rutgers, and may play for the club team. He hit .341 this year with 17 RBI and one home run. He hit .292 over three seasons, with 39 RBI.

Two other seniors will graduate, including infielder Nathan Thompson and pitcher Lunden Chadwell, who sat out the year with Tommy John surgery.

Click below to hear Dom Parenti and Owen Reynolds talk about Middlesex’s 2025 Group 1 championship and Central Jersey Sports Radio Team of the Year honors:

by Mike Pavlichko

Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Boys’ Basketball Team of the Year: Montgomery Cougars

Starting out a season, there can be multiple goals. Win your division. Win your county. Win a state title.

Only ten teams will get to play in the last game of the year. And this year, the Montgomery boys’ basketball team was one of them.

But that wasn’t all. The Cougars checked off the box next to division champs, winning the Skyland Conference Raritan with a 10-0 record. And while they fell in the county semifinals to Rutgers Prep, they won a second straight Central Jersey Group 4 title – both coming at home – defeating West Windsor-Plainsboro North to claim another piece of hardware.

The state final? Hey, they went up against to No. 1-ranked team in New Jersey in Plainfield, which won the game and the Group 4 title, and should finish as the top team in the Garden State this year.

Not a bad resume.

And yet, even bringing key parts back from last year, who knew how it would play out?

Senior Christian Hill had to play a bigger role. Ethan Lin was coming off a horrific ankle injury late last year that kept him out of the entire postseason run, both in the county and state tournament; how would he rebound? Would Ukrainian import Bohdan Biekietov be as dominant with teams now aware of his skill. And how would his fellow countryman Kyryl Streltsov fit in with the bunch.

There’s no guarantee, even with a good core back, but Montgomery answered the bell time and time again. Their loss to Plainfield? It was their only public school loss this season, and only the second public school they’ve lost to in two years. The other? Lenape, which beat them last year in the regular season and again in the Group 4 semifinals.

But Montgomery checked that box, too, avenging those defeats with a dominant win over the Indians in this year’s Group 4 semis to get to Jersey Mike’s Arena this past Sunday.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Montgomery seniors Christian Hill, Braden Ginsberg, Bohdan Biekietov, and Kyryl Streltsov, junior Ethan Lin, and head coach Kris Grundy:

by Mike Pavlichko

Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Girls’ Basketball Team of the Year: Hillsborough Raiders

For the past two years, the Hillsborough girls’ basketball team has been rewriting the record books.

Last year, they won the program’s first-ever state sectional title. Last year’s team finished 21-9, and beat Elizabeth in a surprise North 2, Group 4 title game at home, thanks to upsets elsewhere in the bracket.

This year, they rewrote more history. Cesci Schrio became the all-time leading scorer in school history, girls or boys. The won another sectional title, this time as the No. 1 seed, and this time in Central Jersey Group 4, beating the No. 2 team in the Greater Middlesex Conference, Monroe, in the finals.

And for good measure, they had more up their sleeve. After topping Cherokee in the Group 4 semifinals, they went to the state Group 4 championship game and faced a familiar opponent: a West Orange team they’d beaten on the road, 58-54, less than a month earlier.

And they won again, this time by three, to finish as Group 4 champions, the No. 1 public school in the NJSIAA’s group of biggest schools in the state.

Where they finish in the state rankings is irrelevant. They went from start to finish, to the last game of the entire season in the state, and brought home another piece of hardware.

Hope they’ve got a bigger budget for the trophy case.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Hillsborough’s three key seniors – Cesci Schiro, Maya Loniewski, and Reghan Bice – as well as head coach Courtney Tierney:

by Mike Pavlichko

Phillipsburg Stateliners finish their business, win title, make history… and are Central Jersey Sports Radio 2024 Big Central Team of the Year

Of all the excellent teams in the Big Central Conference in 2024, only one did what Phillipsburg did. And they’re the first to do it in league history.

The reached the state finals.

New Jersey only started playing to overall Group Champions in 2022, and in the third year, Phillipsburg became the first Big Central team to play in one of those title games.

And while they fell to a very good Winslow Twp. team at Rutgers last Wednesday night, the title game berth was historic. Coupled with an 11-3 season and the North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 title, that makes Phillipsburg our Big Central Team of the Year in 2024.

They were also No. 1 in our final Top Ten rankings, which don’t always correlate to the Team of the Year. But this season, it did.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Phillipsburg head coach Frank Duffy about their 2024 season:

by Mike Pavlichko

Bridgewater-Raritan seniors reflect on 30-3, four-trophy season, as CJSR 2024 Team of the Year

The immensely successful 2024 baseball season for Bridgewater-Raritan is officially in the rear view mirror, but the seniors in particular are enjoying the fact they they are going out as champions.

They won the Skyland Conference Delaware Division, the Somerset County Tournament, the North 2, Group 4 sectional title and the state Group 4 championship, a rare feat in high school baseball. They also finished No. 1 in the final Bellamy & Son Paving Central Jersey Sports Radio rankings.

With that, we talked with three seniors, co-captains Devin Goldberg, Matt Fattore and Frankie Verano.

And on the list of accomplishments by the team, all three contributed significantly.

Goldberg – who held the single-season stolen base record with 20 last year – shattered it this year with 37 on a team that stole 157 all year, up from a previous program-best of 64 last year.

Fattore is an excellent first baseman, making picks many others wouldn’t. And he hit three home runs, all in the postseason: one in the SCT semis to break a 2-2 tie against Watchung Hills, one in the Group 4 semis against Livingston, and another in the Group 4 final versus Eastern.

And Verano? Well, heading into the Group 4 semis – the penultimate game of the year – he was hitting under .170, bugged by a balky hamstring all year, yet still managed 14 runs batted in. Sure enough, against Livingston, he knocked in two more runs, one each in his first two at bats. Sixteen RBIs would be solid on any team, for someone hitting near .300, but under .200? That’s remarkable, and a sign of how every player gave something to this Panther team.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with senior co-captains Devin Goldberg, Matt Fattore and Frankie Verano about their 2024 season:

by Mike Pavlichko

Three key Rutgers Prep seniors talk about ending their HS careers right where they started: No. 1

Mikayla Blakes, Chloe Escanillas and Zahra Alexander have a bond that few classmates at a non-public school ever have, one that saw them play together for years before they ended up at Rutgers Prep.

But what the soon-to-be-graduating seniors have done on Easton Avenue is immeasurable. A few facts:

In the four-year history of the Bellamy & Son Paving/Central Jersey Sports Radio Top Ten, they are the only team to hold that ranking, for a streak of 37 consecutive weeks in the No. 1 spot.

They won the first-ever, one-off top Skyland Conference pod in the 2021 COVID-shortened season. Since, they have won all three Somerset County Tournaments, and all three Non-Public South B titles in the state playoffs. They won the Group B title in 2022 and went to the Tournament of Champions.

Rutgers Prep with its third straight Non-Public South B trophy, after beating St. Rose at Jackson Liberty HS on March 4, 2024. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)

They never lost a single game to a Skyland Conference opponent, continuing a streak that started in 2019, and shows no sign of ending any time soon.

Blakes will be playing at Vanderbilt next fall, Escanillas at Marist, and Alexander at NYU. All three have contributed in varying ways to Rutgers Prep’s success, and all three helped lay the groundwork for and instill the values of hard work in younger players like Ava LaMonica and GiGi Battle – who will be juniors next season – as well as those who’ll arrive in the coming years.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mikayla Blakes, Chloe Escanillas and Zahra Alexander talk about Rutgers Prep’s 2023-24 season, and their careers with the Argonauts:

by Mike Pavlichko

With two titles in one season, Colonia’s Jones was instrumental for CJSR’s #1 Team in ’23-’24

Basketball is truly a team game, and perhaps no one understands that – or benefitted from it – more than Jaeden Jones.

Jones – who will graduate from Colonia this spring, then put away the gym shoes for cleats and a helmet when he suits up for the Monmouth University football team later this fall – used his point guard skills on the gridiron the past two years as a quarterback, then this year saw some pressure come off him on the hardwood with the continued emergence of sophomore Aiden Derkack, the GMC Tournament MVP.

That, plus a supporting cast that includes starting seniors Matt McSorley and James Curet, helped Colonia win its first full GMC Tournament since 2015, and take the North 2, Group 3 title for a third straight year, all while navigating the devastating loss of assistant coach Danny Brix in between the GMC Tournament final and the opening game of the state tournament.

Colonia finished 22-9 for a second straight year, and has won 20 or more games in all five full seasons (the COVID-shortened 2021 season didn’t even have 20 games in it) with coach Jose Rodriguez at the helm.

Click below to hear Colonia Senior Jaeden Jones talk about the Patriots’ 2023-24 season:

by Mike Pavlichko

Bernards Mountaineers are 2023 Central Jersey Sports Radio Team of the Year

In both the Central Jersey Sports Radio rankings and the Big Central Media Poll, Phillipsburg ended the season No. 1. They reached the sectional finals of the playoffs – one of only two teams in the conference to do so this year – and beat arch-rival Easton on Thanksgiving for the second year in a row, something they hadn’t done in 20 years.

But Bernards was the real story this year. A 12-1 season gives them a school record for wins. The Mountaineers won their first-ever sectional championship, beating Lakeland in overtime for the North 2, Group 2 title.

They are a program that has consistently been solid under head coach Jon Simoneau in his 16 seasons, especially of late.

And having brought it all home this year, Bernards is the Central Jersey Sports Radio Team of the Year for 2023.

Simoneau also picked up his 100th career win this year, a milestone achieved with a great group of kids that just love being around each other.

Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Bernards senior lineman Logan Ritchie about the Mountaineers’ magical 2023 championship season: