Girls Basketball: South Brunswick avenges early-season loss, topples Piscataway
SOUTH BRUNSWICK – On Jan. 3, the South Brunswick High School girls basketball team lost its first game of the season to Red Division rivals Piscataway. On Thursday evening, the Vikings were not going to let history repeat itself.
With its 58-43 loss to the Chiefs a distant memory, South Brunswick went on a 15-0 run over the course of the first and second quarters as the Vikings avenged its early season loss with a 54-23 victory over Piscataway.
With the victory, South Brunswick (13-2) takes a three-game lead in the Red Division.
“Especially after that first game (against Piscataway), I feel like we didn’t really show who we were as a team because we didn’t know ourselves, and we didn’t play like ourselves,” South Brunswick junior forward Alexis Adams said. “As the season has gone on, we’ve learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to play to our full potential. We came into this game knowing that we’re not going to come out with a loss.”
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Both squads struggled offensively as four points combined were scored in the first four minutes. Then the Vikings got hot and never looked back.
Senior guard Amber Brown, who finished with 12 points, knocked down two 3-pointers on South Brunswick’s 15-0 that ended with a 18-3 lead about two minutes into the second quarter. Adams was a force in the paint and scored eight points in the first half to give the Vikings a 31-11 halftime lead.
Piscataway’s hopes of mounting a comeback after halftime abruptly ended when South Brunswick’s Onoseta Ufuah scored the first eight points of the third quarter as the Vikings took a 39-11 lead.
“We were so set on what we needed to do and how to accomplish it, that even when we were down, we weren’t down on ourselves,” Adams said. “We just knew that if we kept shooting, they’d start falling eventually.”
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South Brunswick usually has the tallest girls on the court in six-footers Adams and Leeannah Hunter, but Piscataway has 5’11” sophomore center Saniya Myers in the paint. By preventing the guards from getting the ball to Myers, Adams and Hunter significantly slowed down Piscataway’s paint presence.
Remarkably, South Brunswick all but shut down Piscataway’s top scorer, junior forward LaNiya Miller as well. Miller averages 17.6 points per game and scored 18 points in the previous matchups of the two teams, but South Brunswick held her to only two points on Thursday.
With a rotation of 10 players, South Brunswick has perhaps the deepest rotation in the GMC, and that depth kept the Vikings fresh on offense and defense, even without injured starting point guard Natalia Louhisdon.
“I think they got the better of us in the first matchup, we had to respond and play tougher, and I think we did that tonight,” South Brunswick coach Jeff Johnson said. “I think with the numbers we can run out there now, our offense is better than it was last year, which is a shock because we don’t have Natalia, but our defense is just really good right now.”
Staff Writer Daniel LoGiudice can be reached at dlogiudice@gannettnj.com. Follow him on Twitter @danny_logiudice.