West Windsor-Plainsboro North – Central Jersey Sports Radio

When you think “Championship Game”, a close game with a raucous crowd comes to mind.

Saturday’s Boys Central Jersey Group 4 Championship had one of those.

Montgomery used a second quarter where it outscored West Windsor-Plainsboro North 27-4 to take a 50-20 lead into the halftime locker room. The Cougars never looked back, winning their second straight sectional title 80-41.

After a quick start from the Knights, Montgomery locked in defensively and dominated the rest of the game, as the Cougars outscored West Windsor-Plainsboro North 68-25 after the first quarter.

Ethan Lin continued his star-studded season with 26 points – and six three-pointers – in the first three quarters as Montgomery took a commanding 68-33 lead after 24 minutes of play. Christian Hill added 19 points as the lone other Cougar in double figures, with seven other players getting in the scoring column. Bohdan Biekietov added nine points.

Montgomery as a team hit 14 three-pointers.

The Knights hit some early threes in the first quarter, led by three from Blake Amos Whitfield as part of his 11 points to keep West Windsor-Plainsboro North in the game. He finished with 15 points for the game.

Ryan Jean-Baptiste was the Knights’ next-leading scorer with nine points, with two made threes in the third quarter.

The Cougars will move on to the Group 4 semifinals, where they will face Lenape, who defeated Cherry Hill East 48-47 earlier on Saturday to win the South Jersey Group 4 title.

It serves as a rematch of last year’s Group 4 semifinal, a 57-43 win for the Indians.

Montgomery will look for its revenge.

Click below for postgame reaction from ….

Montgomery guard Ethan Lin

Montgomery Head Coach Kris Grundy

When Ethan Lin went down with a horrific ankle injury late last year, the Montgomery boys’ basketball team rallied, and found a way to finish the year strong, going to the Somerset County Tournament title game, and winning a Central Jersey Group 4 title.

Lin is back, there have been other injuries, and some new players, but the Cougars are back as well.

Saturday afternoon, top-seed Montgomery will host second-seed West Windsor-Plainsboro North in the Central Jersey Group 4 title game at 3 pm at “The Cougar Den,” the nickname for their home gym that gets very, very loud, rockin’ with heavy student attendance and huge support from the community. (Follow Alec Crouthamel on Twitter for updates in the second half, and postgame story on cjsportsradio.com.)

It all plays into the theme of family veteran head coach Kris Grundy has established in his program.

Both the Cougars and Knights are 23-5 on the season.

West Windsor-Plainsboro North is a senior-heavy team – eight of the 15 players listed on their roster are seniors – led by Malachi Jeffers-Viera. The forward is averaging 19.6 points per game, but contributes in a lot of other ways. He leads the team in rebounds at 8.6 per game, as well as assists (107) and steals (64), and is second in blocks with 24. Aaryan Dadan has a team-best 31 blocked shots.

That will test the Cougars inside, where Bohdan Biekietov and fellow Ukrainain countryman Kyryl Streltsov will guard the rim.

Biekietov hasn’t put up the numbers he did last year, when he was an unknown to many, his first time in the U.S. after fleeing the war with his mother and sister, while his father defends the homeland against Russia. Streltsov joined him this season.

But in the semifinals, a 67-43 win over North Brunswick, Biekietov came alive for 21 points, after Grundy and his staff showed him video of how dominant he was last year. Against the Raiders, he looked like the Bohdan of 2023-24.

Lin, meanwhile, has dominated games this season, averaging 19.9 points per game and hitting a whopping 78 times from beyond the arc. Biekietov is still scoring, averaging 12.2 per game, second on the team.

Click below to hear Montgomery head coach Kris Grundy talk about the Cougars’ playoff run, and the Central Jersey Group 4 title game against West Windsor-Plainsboro North: