Bruins earn spot in HCT finals

North Bergen Bruins

Amanda Rivera jumps into the arms of a teammate after North Bergen's semifinal win.

Click Here for more photos from North Bergen vs Secaucus

By Jason Bernstein
Editorial Director

JERSEY CITY – The North Bergen girls basketball team has found its identity. One of that revolves around defense.

The second-seeded Bruins continued their dominant run on that side of the ball in a 50-38 victory over Secaucus in the semifinals of the Hudson County Tournament at the Yanitelli Center. It marked the ninth-straight game in which North Bergen (22-2) has held its opponent under 40 points.

“You start out in the beginning of the year with some kind of philosophy. For us it was let’s play defense and let’s rebound,” head coach Dan Reardon said. “At the beginning of the year we weren’t very good at it and had a couple of bad losses in the Christmas Tournament. But we got better and better at it and if you stick with it and you have some talent, you can get these results.”

The results would make any coach smile. They held the third-seeded Patriots (20-3) to a season-low in scoring as Secaucus suffered its first loss since the first meeting with North Bergen back on Dec. 30.

“I credit their defense,” Patriots head coach John Sterling said. “We struggled offensively all game.”

After being shutdown for most of the first half, Secaucus’ Andrea Innis nearly single-handedly revived the offense. The senior scored on consecutive field goals in the final minute of the half (the later breaking the school’s all-time scoring mark). She followed it up with seven points in the first three minutes of the third to give her team a 25-20 lead.

The Bruins would respond though with a 21-8 run, jump-started by an unlikely 3-pointer from sophomore Amanda Rivera. Senior Ashley Heredia then put North Bergen up for good with six straight points, starting with a basket which made it 30-29 with 32 seconds left in the third.

Heredia would finish with a team-high 15 points for North Bergen, eight of them coming in the game’s final 8:32.

“She’s been stepping it up for about a month now where she’s taking the pressure off of everybody else,” Reardon said. “We never really expected her to score that much last year. In the second half of this year she’s stepping it up. She realizes that if we’re going to advance, she was going to have to contribute more and she has.”

“She’s very patient offensively,” added Sterling. “She only shoots good shots.”

Ashley Vazzona added 11 points and sophomore Doris Ilic scored eight in the win, North Bergen’s 19th-straight.

It was enough to hold off Innis, who scored 17 of her 22 points in the second half of her record-breaking performance. Innis broke Cory Roesing’s old mark for more career points (boys or girls) and now has 1,809 points and counting.

“We’re asking her to do so much,” Sterling said. “She’s handling the ball, she’s rebounding, and we’re asking her to score. You need the other kids to share that load and I tell the other girls you’ve got to be able to step up and take some of the pressure off Andrea from doing too much. We didn’t get the support that we needed from everyone today offensively.”

With the victory, North Bergen will face Bayonne in the championship game on Saturday at 7 p.m. The Bruins won the head-to-head matchup 39-30 this past Wednesday in North Bergen.

Ashley Heredia, Andrea Innis

Ashley Heredia (left) and Andrea Innis (right) both led their teams in scoring.

	1	2	3	4	Total
Secaucus Patriots (20-3)	6	10	13	9	38
North Bergen Bruins (22-2)	7	11	14	18	50

Secaucus

North Bergen

	2s	3s	1s	Pts
Shannon Waters	3	0	1	7
Andrea Innis	8	1	3	22
Danielle Roesing	1	0	2	4
Alyssa Lyngholm	0	1	1	4
Ariana Simon	0	0	1	1
Lauren Guillen	0	0	0	0
Brittney Mitchell	0	0	0	0
Total:	12	2	8	38

	2s	3s	1s	Pts
Ashley Vazzona	5	0	1	11
Ashley Heredia	7	0	1	15
Jazmin Palma	0	0	2	2
Amanda Rivera	1	1	0	5
Doris Ilic	3	0	2	8
Raynneliz Carrillo	1	0	2	4
Kayla Muniz	0	0	0	0
Nicole Paulino	2	0	1	5
Total:	19	1	9	50

North Bergen: Paulino 6 rebounds; Ilic 4 rebounds; Palma 4 assists. Secaucus: Innis 9 rebounds, 5 steals; Waters 9 rebounds, 4 assists; Roesing 6 rebounds; Simon 4 steals.