New Providence Keeps Rolling With 40-30 Victory Over County's Best

You can call them the streak-busters or whatever other moniker you can conjure up, but right now, New Providence is simply this: one very good basketball team.

One night after halting Dayton’s 13-game winning streak at home, the Lady Pioneers posted its most-impressive victory of the season – a 40-30 decision over Roselle Catholic – Friday night in Roselle. New Providence is now 16-3 and has won a season-high of seven straight games.

Roselle Catholic (19-2) entered the game riding a 15-game winning streak and was ranked 20th, according to The Star-Ledger’s state-wide rankings. Roselle Catholic hadn’t lost to a county opponent in over a year – a span of 28 games.

“We played very hard and came out with a very nice win,” said New Providence coach Cap Pazdera. “Our goal was to focus on defense and keep (Melissa) Tobie in check. And we did that in the first half.”

New Providence raced to an 18-8 lead at the half behind seven points from Laura Gregory and five from Kaitlin Cresencia. Gregory finished with nine points and Cresencia had 11. , led all New Providence scorers with 13 points.

“We played smart on offense,” said Pazdera. “We worked for our shot and didn’t force anything."

Tobie, one of the county's best players, still finished with a game-high 19 points and 18 rebounds, but no other Roeslle Catholic scorer had more than four points as it was held to a season-low 30 points.

One night earlier, Squeri, a sophomore, had a team-high 15 points as . The match-up last night was arguably between the two best teams in Union County.

On Wednesday, Roselle Catholic, which has won the last two Union County Tournaments, earned the top seed for this year’s tourney. New Providence followed with the second seed. The two schools – along with third-seeded Gov. Livingston (which is 2-1 against New Providence this year) and fourth-seeded Cranford – each received byes into the quarterfinal round on Sunday, Feb. 20.

New Providence doesn’t have a game scheduled until then, but Pazdera is seeking to fill that hole with a game or two this week. While the victory is certainly a signature one for this year, Pazdera is not looking past the task at hand.

“For some reason we haven’t won a game in the tournament in the past three years,” said Pazdera, who guided New Providence to its first Group 1 state title last winter. “We’re focusing on our first county game – and any other game we play before that.

“We had a nice victory against Roselle Catholic, but they’re a team that will use that loss as motivation. They are very well coached and will surely rebound.”

New Providence’s game against Union on Thursday, Feb. 17 has been postponed because Union will now be playing a UCT game that day.