Andrew Constant – Sports Writer

South Brunswick’s Taylor Brantley blocks the shot attempt of East Brunswick’s Dayna Sclafani in Thursday’s game. Photo by: Mark R. Sullivan

EAST BRUNSWICK — With an extra emphasis on boxing out and limiting second chances, the East Brunswick High School girls basketball team scored a big victory Thursday night.

Despite being the smaller of the two teams on the court, East Brunswick outrebounded South Brunswick 28-18 and jumped out to an early lead en route to a 41-24 win.

East Brunswick (11-2) head coach Keith Lane has said all season that his squad is becoming more and more comfortable with one another and that showed Thursday, as defensive rotations were crisp and passes were on the money in transition for easy baskets.

“We are playing very, very well as a team right now,” Lane said. “We have good team chemistry and a lot of girls with varsity experience and we’re really playing together.”

The Bears raced out to a 24-13 halftime advantage, thanks in large part to junior Julia Simoes’ three 3-pointers. Six different players scored in the opening 16 minutes, led by Simoes’ nine.

“We got the lead early so we were more settled and when the shots fall, everybody is in a better mood and has a better outlook,” Simoes said. “Everyone was making shots and this was really a group effort tonight.”

Simoes noted that the focus on the defensive end was to limit South Brunswick’s top scoring threat, Jackie Siva-Harrison. Despite scoring 13 points for the game, Siva-Harrison was pressured throughout and made just a pair of free throws in the fourth quarter.

“We focused on Jackie and played a couple of different coverages on her and that worked pretty well,” Simoes said. “We’ve been focusing on defense at practice a lot and it paid off tonight.”

The two teams played for the All-Brunswick Tournament title on Dec. 28, with South Brunswick (8-4) winning 35-24. In that matchup, East Brunswick’s Dayna Sclafani scored just five points and pulled in just three rebounds. Thursday, Sclafani scored a team-high 13 points and hauled down seven boards.

“Since it was the beginning of the season when we played them the first time, we weren’t quite prepared,” Sclafani said. “I don’t think everyone was really focused, but we came into this one knowing we could win. This game means a lot to us; South Brunswick is a good team, but we were able to come out with a big win.”

Sclafani said that the third quarter has been her team’s achillies heel all season long, but the junior scored seven of her points in the stanza and East Brunswick weathered a more aggressive South Brunswick offense.

“We told each other at halftime that we needed to push it, knowing how good South Brunswick is. Everyone was focused in that third quarter and we were able to pull it out,” Sclafani said.

East Brunswick shot 15-47 (31.9 percent) as a team, but Sclafani made 7-8 free throws – the only ones the Bears shot in the game – and won the rebounding battle by simply being more aggressive when the ball was in the air.

“We work on rebounding and boxing out a lot. We put a heavy precedence on it,” Lane said. “Offensive rebounds are key for what we do and we knew that we needed to limit them to one shot and not allow extra chances.”

The Bears are now a half-game ahead of South Brunswick in the Red Division race.

John F Kennedy’s Jolie Tang (4) drives around Woodbridge’s Brielle Bannister on Monday in Woodbridge. Photo by: Ed Pagliarini

WOODBRIDGE — For any team to be successful, having senior leadership in key.

For the J.F. Kennedy High School girls basketball team, Taylor Freeman and Jolie Tang stepped up and showed their poise when it mattered most, leading the Mustangs to a 69-54 victory over neighborhood rival Woodbridge Monday night.

Freeman and Tang each scored 26 points, and the latter had 12 rebounds and made all nine of her free throws in a contest that saw 45 fouls called and the teams shoot 60 combined free throws.

“This is absolutely a good win. The past two games against Colonia and tonight against Woodbridge, we haven’t had what I would consider to be the best officials, but I tell the girls that we need to be in control of the things we can control,” J.F. Kennedy head coach Heidi Hodnett said. “We know we need to step to the line and make free throws and that’s what happened tonight.”

Tang knocked down 7-7 free throws in the final eight minutes, with six of those coming in the final 1:37 to stretch a 61-53 lead into 68-54. Tang scored 20 of her 26 points in the second half, teaming with Freeman to nearly outscore the Barrons by themselves. Freeman had 13 in each half.

“As seniors, Jolie and Taylor have the mental toughness and when they get the ball in their hands, they’re going to get fouled,” Hodnett said. “Jolie did a great job of rebounding Woodbridge’s misses and getting fouled there in the fourth quarter. She’s really like ice out there.”

J.F. Kennedy was up 25-20 at halftime, as they shot just 8-30 in the opening 16 minutes. But coming out of the locker room, the Mustangs shot the ball at a much more efficient rate, connecting on 7-13 in the stanza. Tang scored nine and Freeman clicked for seven in the third, but Woodbridge refused to go quietly.

The Barrons actually won the quarter 22-20, with Brielle Bannister scoring eight of her 14 points. Gabby Jones, who led Woodbridge with 21 points on the night, chipped in six in the third. Jones also hauled in nine rebounds and made 10-12 free throws. Bannister recorded a double-double with her 14 points and 12 rebounds for the Barrons.

But in the opening moments of the fourth quarter, leading-scorer Brianna Valdes picked up her fourth foul for Woodbridge and was forced to the bench. Valdes, the Greater Middlesex Conference’s fourth-leading scorer for the season, would foul out with 1:37 to go, and finish with 16 points.

Fouls also affected J.F. Kennedy’s Rachel Andrejcak, who fouled out herself with 1:02 to play. Andrejcak, who leads the conference in rebounding per game, managed just four rebounds to go with seven points — four of which came in the fourth quarter.

“Rachel has struggled in some of our games this year and when she does, Taylor and Jolie step up on the outside,” Hodnett said. “Not too many teams have a girl strong enough to guard Rachel, so that’s the game plan going in: get her the ball and they’ll have to collapse on her and we can get the outside shooting going.”

J.F. Kennedy shot 14-26 from the field in the second half and made 19-30 from the charity stripe for the game. Woodbridge, by comparison, hit 11-25 from the field and 18-30 from the line.

“We always have close games with Colonia and Woodbridge, from the White and the Red divisions, respectively, so we know that these are must-wins for us. To beat a top 10 team in the county, that’s important for us.”

SOUTH PLAINFIELD — With Bishop Ahr breathing down its neck and mounting a late rally, the South Plainfield High School girls basketball team looked to one Yasmeen Mighty to make the game’s biggest play.

As the clock ticked down to 30 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter and a 10-point lead having been dwindled down to four, Mighty came up with a steal in the backcourt and a driving layup, pushing the lead back to six.

“Yasmeen made the play of the game, with the steal and basket at the end,” South Plainfield head coach Kevin Hughes said. “She has the ability and I just give her a little more freedom than everybody else because she makes plays like that.”

Despite getting just three points — all in the fourth quarter — from leading scorer Kate McLaughlin, South Plainfield held on for a 44-39 victory over Bishop Ahr Thursday night in a key Greater Middlesex Conference White Division showdown. The win coupled with a 57-52 defeat of the Trojans on opening night — gave South Plainfield a two-game cushion in the divisional race over Bishop Ahr, the two-time defending White Division champions.

“This is a great win; going in, having beaten them in the first game of the year, if things didn’t go well tonight and you told me at the beginning of the year that we’d go 1-1 against Bishop Ahr, I’d would have signed up for that,” Hughes said. “So to get two quality wins against them is great.”

The teams got off to an even start, with South Plainfield leading 17-13 at halftime, but Hughes knew his squad was capable of going on a game-defining run.

“I told the girls that I thought we were going to go on a run in the third quarter and we just had to keep playing defense the way we did,” he said.

And Hughes was right. In the decisive third quarter, South Plainfield out-scored Bishop Ahr 15-11, with Sarah Cargill and Amanda Harper each scoring five in the stanza. Cargill finished with a game-high 18 points, picking up the slack on a night where McLaughlin — who averages 11.8 points per game — made just three free throws.

“Sarah’s been getting there each game; becoming a little more aggressive and we’ve been talking about it long enough and tonight it clicked,” Hughes said. “She went to the basket and made things happen. We haven’t traditionally won games where Kate hasn’t been our leading scorer, so it was nice to see Sarah step up tonight.”

Mighty finished with 11 points and eight rebounds, to go with her game-deciding steal and South Plainfield made 4-6 free throws in the fourth quarter to keep its edge.

Bishop Ahr battled in the fourth quarter, with Lauren Barlow scoring seven of her team-best 15 points. The sophomore guard made three 3-pointers for the game and was the Trojans’ lone scorer to reach double-digits on a night where they shot 14-42 (33 percent) from the field. Jenna Harsh scored seven points and added seven rebounds and Brianna Foster, playing through foul trouble all night, chipped in five points and six boards for Bishop Ahr.

South Plainfield now sits in a first place tie with Monroe — each team is 6-1 in White Division play — as the season reaches its second month.

“Going into tonight, there were five of us within a game of each other in the White Division, so I think that’s the way it’s going to be for the rest of the year,” Hughes said. “The more quality wins you can get prepares us for the next night and there is no easy game in the White this year. Anybody can beat anybody. It’s going to be a wild end of the season.”

EDISON — After jumping out to a 20-point lead at halftime, the Old Bridge High School girls basketball team seemed to relax a little too much for head coach Dan DiMino’s liking.

“We were just too relaxed in the second half and fourth quarter,” DiMino said. “The first half is what set the tone for us for the rest of the game, but the girls got too comfortable at the end.”

Despite scoring just one point in the fourth quarter, Old Bridge (4-7) hung on for a 38-30 victory over J.P. Stevens Saturday afternoon.

Taylor Torre knocked down three 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 16 points and freshman Amanda Carney scored 12 points to lead the Knights.

Old Bridge held a 29-9 lead at intermission, but J.P. Stevens found life in the third quarter, going on a 6-0 run to cut into the lead and as time expired in the stanza, Kathleen Tong knocked down a 3-pointer to cut it to 37-21.

In the fourth, J.P. Stevens (1-8) scored the first nine points, as Laya Paladugu hit a 3-pointer and raced down the court for a layup and Molly Yelencsics made a pair of free throws and a coast-to-coast layup.

But Torre knocked down a free throw with 28.2 seconds remaining for the lone Knights point of the quarter to end any hopes of a dramatic comeback victory for the Hawks.

“They really came back strong and that’s all you can ask,” J.P. Stevens head coach Amy Bonk said. “I’m trying to get them to put a whole game together, four quarters, not just two, but this was a nice comeback for us.”

Yelencsics finished with nine points, eight of which came in the second half, to lead J.P. Stevens and Laya Paladugu chipped in seven points. Rebecca DiSerio and Tong each had five points and seven rebounds for the Hawks.

“J.P. Stevens is a good team, even though their record doesn’t show it,” DiMino said. “You play against anybody, they’re going to play to the end and I think it’s good to have a close game in the end, where we had to bring the starters back in and get some stops on defense.”

J.P. Stevens made 6 of 24 shots in the second half after shooting just 4 of 17 in the first half. But the Hawks got themselves back into it by limiting their turnovers. In the opening 16 minutes, the turned the ball over 19 times; after intermission, they had just six more.

“We’re young and made up of underclassmen, so this gives us some positive confidence,” Bonk said. “We’re right there, so we know we can come back and we’re growing and getting better. We just need to get over that hump.”

The Hawks out-rebounded Old Bridge 35-19, but Carney and Torre were ultimately too much to handle.

“Amanda’s freshman year that she’s having is unbelievable. We’re not even halfway through the season, so I can’t wait to see what else she can do for us,” DiMino said. “And Taylor is a one of our senior captains; She’s a leader on the court and she’s a great asset for us.”

Metuchen High School senior point guard Katelynn Flaherty will miss 2-3 weeks with a fractured foot, as first reported by MSG Varsity’s Gregg Lerner.

Flaherty, who transferred from Point Pleasant Beach to Metuchen on Jan. 2, debuted for the Bulldogs Wednesday against Mother Seton and posted an impressive stat line of 26 points, eight assists and eight steals.

Flaherty appeared to hurt herself in the second quarter of Metuchen’s 68-48 victory, but she came back to score 10 points in the third quarter before sitting out the final quarter.

“She’s become a vital part of the team, both on and off court. She’s sharing her wisdom with the players and everyone respects one another,” Metuchen head coach Pat Mayo said. “We’ll make the best of it.”

Mayo said that she doesn’t have a definitive time frame of how long Flaherty will be out, but she said it’ll be at least one week.

In Friday night’s game against Wardlaw-Hartridge, senior Cassie Smith scored a season-high 47 points, adding 17 rebounds and five steals to pace the Bulldogs to a 67-41 victory.

“We are going to play our regular game until Katelynn gets back,” Mayo said. “If Cassie scores 40, we’ll take what’s given to us. Our complimentary players are getting better, so we’ll be OK.”