Girls basketball: Somerville tops Warren Hills to claim second straight sectional crown

SOMERVILLE – Christina Cernuto spent much of the first three quarters of Monday night’s NJSIAA North 2 Group III final on the Somerville High School girls basketball team’s bench.

The Pioneers’ leading scorer battled foul trouble, leaving her noticeably frustrated, her cheeks flushed and her eyes narrowed each time she returned to the bench, unenthusiastically accepting hand slaps from her teammates as she dropped herself into an empty chair. But as the soccer-superstar-turned-basketball-standout has done all season, when it came to crunch time, she was more than happy to put the team on her back.

Cernuto scored nine of her 11 points in the fourth quarter, delivering an immediate retort nearly every time Warren Hills tried to grab the momentum and mount a sustained rally, as she added to key second-half performances by senior classmates Meghan Douglas and Anna McVerry, helping the top-seeded Pioneers to their second straight sectional title, 55-47, over the third-seeded Blue Streaks at Somerville High School.

“I knew I was in foul trouble, but my team just kept me in it, telling me to keep my head up, and that’s what I did,” said Cernuto, the school’s all-time leading soccer scorer, who is heading to the University of Albany to play the sport next fall. “I went back in there and I wanted to win a state (sectional) championship, and that’s what we did.”

“She was frustrated, she was in foul trouble and everything was against her,” said Somerville coach Matt Melesurgo, whose team will face Old Tappan at 7 p.m. Wednesday, weather permitting, at Ramapo High School. “And that’s a Division I athlete, physically and mentally getting through it and finding a way to get it done.”

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With Cernuto and Douglas both in early foul trouble, junior Emily Markowski took charge in the first half, as she tallied nine of her team-high 17 points before halftime, helping Somerville turn a 9-5 first-quarter advantage to a 22-12 lead, thanks also to a pair of clutch 3-pointers off the bench from Sara Tavares to help the Pioneers open things up.

With Douglas, who finished with 12 points and eight rebounds, limited in the first half, McVerry also stepped up, handling the majority of the work on the boards, collecting five of her eight rebounds before intermission. In the third, McVerry delivered from the field, knocking down a huge 3-pointer with 2:15 left to stop a 7-0 Warren Hills run that had gotten the Blue Streaks to within four points.

After Kelsey Mehan began the fourth quarter by completing a 3-point play to give Somerville a 36-26 lead, Warren Hills came to life again, as Nicole Mallard, who netted a game-high 22 points -- many off steals -- led the charge, tallying 10 points in the period. But Cernuto had a response for each of her baskets, as the pair exchanged three consecutive buckets apiece and the Pioneers maintained a six-point advantage.

“If we hadn’t had done that we wouldn’t have won,” Cernuto said. “It was a team effort. We all put our hearts into that fourth quarter and the whole game, and we pulled through. I knew I was in foul trouble and I was really frustrated about it, but I just thought to myself, I have to do this.”

Warren Hills got as close as 45-41 with 2:28 left after a Devyn Gara 3-pointer, but the senior trio of Cernuto, Douglas and McVerry helped finish it out. It gave Somerville its second straight sectional title, despite many expecting a rebuilding season for a program that suffered massive graduation losses that included the program’s all-time leading scorer in Melody Van Ness and fellow four-year starters Nyasia Thomas and Beatriz Tomale.

“This is the opposite (of last year),” Melesurgo said. “Last year we were expected to win it, and this year it was like, ‘Nah, they can’t do it again. How is this team winning?’ And here we are. It’s a credit to our seniors today who just dominated that second half and willed it to happen.”

“Last year, we were expected to win and everyone thought we’d win, so we met expectations,” Douglas said. “But this year, I think, nobody really expected anything, so we exceeded everyone’s expectations. We wanted to do well and we wanted to prove everyone wrong. It gave us motivation, everyone telling us we wouldn’t be as good and we couldn’t do it without them (the graduated stars). So we used that motivation to push us and here we are.”

Simeon Pincus can be reached at CNGirlsHoops@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @SimeonPincus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SimeonPincusCN

WARREN HILLS (19-9) 5-7-14-21 -- 47
SOMERVILLE (22-6) 9-13-11-22 -- 55
WH – Laffan 3-0-6, Johnson 1-0-2, Mallard 7-8-22, Veneziano 1-0-2, Westley 1-(1)-1-6, Larsen 2-2-6, Gara 0-(1)-0-3. Totals: 15-(2)-11-47.
Som – Markowski 7-3-17, Mehan 2-1-5, Cernuto 4-3-11, Douglas 4-4-12, McVerry 0-(1)-1-4, Tavares 0-(2)-0-6. Totals: 17-(3)-12-55.