Princeton girls win state opener
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
WALL — Jenna Greenstein didn’t have time to think. She just reacted and took a shot she’s taken hundreds of times for the West Windsor-Plainsboro High North girls basketball team.
”I’ve done that before,” Greenstein said after her three-point shot as time expired gave the Knights a 63-61 overtime win over Wall in the quarterfinals of the Central Jersey Group III tournament. “There were three seconds left and Kerry (McNeilly) threw it to me and I just had to toss it up there. I didn’t even look at the basket. And I didn’t even get to see if it went in or now because everyone just mobbed me.”
Greenstein’s shot capped a back and forth game that saw the Knights lead by as many as 10 points in the second half, only to see Wall fight back and take an eight-point lead late in the fourth quarter. But North scored the final eight points of regulation to force overtime and then won it on Greenstein’s buzzer beater.
With the win, fifth-seeded WW-P North advanced to face top-seeded Neptune in the CJ III semifinals. Neptune advanced with an 83-42 win over Princeton on Wednesday. The Little Tigers had topped Northern Burlington in the opening round for their first state tournament win in 14 years. WW-P South was eliminated from the CJ IV tournament with a 62-38 loss to Jackson Memorial on Tuesday.
North battled through some foul trouble to freshman Jacquie Klotz, who scored a team-high 20 points before fouling out in overtime. But the rest of the team picked up the offense, connecting on 10 three-point shots in the game. Greenstein made five three-pointers and finished with 15 points, while Lexie Forsell added 11 in the win.
”The biggest thing I thought was going to cause us some trouble was Klotz getting her third foul,” North coach Bob Boyce said. “I had to take her out and then again when she got her fourth foul. That hurt us not just because of her scoring but also the other stuff she does for us. But the other kids stepped up for us.
”It was an interesting game because I told them that if there was a mirror image of us it’s right here with that team. They don’t half-court trap as much as us, but they do a lot of the other things we do the same way we do them.”
Wall, which also connected on 10 shots from beyond the arc, had a one-point lead with five seconds left before Greenstein’s heroics.
”We had a lead and then we lost momentum,” she said. “And then in overtime we were tired and had some foul trouble. We lost one of our best post players when Jacquie Klotz fouled out. But we help each other a lot and have some really good shooters.” Now the Knights get a shot at Neptune, which has lost just once this season and is undefeated against New Jersey competition.
”We’ve played well against good teams,” Boyce said. “We nearly beat Trenton. We had Trenton Catholic in a six-point game. But Neptune is real tough.”
Added Greenstein: “We’re off and on and when we play higher teams we play really hard and we’ve done well. It will be exciting to play them.”
Princeton already knows what it is like to play Neptune, falling to the Scarlet Flyers in the quarterfinals. Molly Barber scored 17 points and Julia Maltby added 11 in the loss.
On Monday, Princeton picked up its first state win since 1995 when it got past Northern Burlington, 43-37. Barber had 16 and Maltby added 15 in the win.
”We had played them in the regular season and they had put a hurting on us and beat us by 20 points,” Princeton coach Steff Shoop said. “This time I think it was a combination of the first time they had a very good game and we had a rough game. This time we played much better. We were solid in every aspect of the game. We played with the lead the whole game and I thought we played very well.”
Playing well is the top concern for Shoop each time the Little Tigers take the court. She knows if they do that, everything else will fall into place.
”We’ve told them time and time again the wins aren’t as important as how we play,” said Shoop, whose team finished 10-14 on the season. “We have won games where I have not been happy because we did not play well or even though it was a victory we had more to give. We’ve also lost some games where I thought we played real well. The main thing is that we play hard and give everything we have to give.”
Shoop is most pleased with the progress the program has made, which included qualifying for the state tournament.
”I’m pretty proud of them,” Shoop said. “I am proud of the girls individually and collectively. And I am proud of our coaching staff. They work so hard and are diligent in what they do. I feel very lucky because I have two great coaches (Patty Barber and Val Rodriguez) working with me and they have really helped turn it around. You can see that we are getting better and better.”
WW-P South battled back from a slow start to get into the state tournament, but ran into a tough foe in Jackson Memorial.
”At one point this season we were 3-9 and then we won six in a row to get to 9-9,” South coach Lisa Guarneri said. “We finished 11-11. I think that with the circumstances we had this year we finished the season on a good note. I told the girls after the game that I was proud of them for how much they had improved and that we were a much better team at the end of the season than when we started. It was nice to see that improvement.”
Erica Simi led the Pirates with 15 points.
”They had a 6-3 center who is being looked at by Division I schools and she was tough for us to guard,” Guarneri said. “We had no one who could match up with her and they would dump the ball into her, which gave us problems.”