Now in his fourth year as the Panthers’ skipper, Bridgewater-Raritan High School girls’ basketball head coach achieved one key milestone to close out last season.
Qualifying for the state tournament.
While his team is still seeking its first postseason victory, Bridgewater-Raritan checked off another key box under his leadership on Thursday evening.
Winning for the first time in the Somerset County Girls’ Basketball Tournament.
Given the Panthers were awarded the No. 10 seed, this gave Bridgewater-Raritan a chip on its shoulder heading into its statement county tournament debut on Thursday evening.
Three losses in four games to area teams by a combined 10 points in early January may have been the difference in forcing No. 10-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan (9-8) to settle for an opening-round game in the county tournament. While they were potentially denied a first-round bye due to the aforementioned stretch, the Panthers used it as fuel. They rolled to a 57-14 victory over crosstown rival and No. 15-seeded Manville High School (8-6) in the first round of the Somerset County Girls’ Basketball Tournament Thursday, January 29, at Vaughn Stapleton Gymnasium in Bridgewater.
“We’ve been working on defense for the entire season, but we had a great practice yesterday working through our shell – five-on-five and understanding how to rotate against big bodies,” said Brooks after the victory. Brooks, whose team’s 14 points allowed was the best in a game to date in his four-season tenure as the Panthers’ head coach.
Most notably, this was accomplished while holding off Manville senior forward Sadie Fleming: a tall task alone, given she recently broke the Mustangs’ 45-year record in career rebounds, which was previously held by its third-all-time leading scorer in Candy Kaschak (1,292 points).
In 2025-26, Fleming entered Manville’s game against Bridgewater-Raritan, averaging a double-double: 13.4 points per game and 10.4 rebounds per game. While Fleming closed out the evening with 1,078 career points and 1,098 career rebounds, Bridgewater-Raritan was able to limit her to just seven points and three rebounds.
Freshman Phoebe Vornlocker (three points, two rebounds, one steal), senior Val Fonseca (two points, four rebounds, three steals), and senior Sophia Gosk (two points, five rebounds) had the remaining points for Manville in defeat.
A signature performance not only on the defensive end for Bridgewater-Raritan, but with its offense also showcasing its recent potential to fire on all cylinders consistently, the Panthers clearly made a loud statement on Thursday evening.
Don’t count out Bridgewater-Raritan.
“Sadie Fleming is a great player,” praised Brooks about Manville’s top scorer. “That was our main focus and protecting the paint, which comes down to being in the right spots to take away any drives. We wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and focused on her, so I’m proud of our girls for locking in and following the scouting report. We’ve had games where we let teams score 14 points in an entire quarter, so to hold Manville to 14 points [in the whole game] is insane.”
“That comes down to our toughness right there.”
Sophomore Safaa Fakhry (12 points, 11 rebounds, five blocks) not only led the way on the glass for Bridgewater-Raritan, which snatched 15 steals and outrebounded Manville, 31-21. She was one of Bridgewater-Raritan’s starting forwards assigned to guard one of the area’s top scorers in Fleming.
After Fleming collected her first points on a basket with 2:35 left in the first quarter, Manville did not convert a field goal again until she scored on back-to-back possessions for the Mustangs in the second minute of the fourth quarter.
“We came in mentally thinking that she is their top scorer and the person to watch out for,” assessed Fakhry of her team’s matchup with Manville. “[Sophomore forward Sarah Hurlbut, junior forward Juliet Kohutis], and I worked really hard to front her, and we made sure to keep her in check. When we played her before, we watched old film and realized she is a great rebounder and good in the post.”
“Even if she scored on us once or twice, we needed to keep our heads up and keep her out of the paint.”
Bridgewater-Raritan shot 44 percent (22-for-50) while allowing just 12 percent (five-for-42) shooting at the other end of its home court, and this factors in a lethal 0-for-25 stretch of field goals allowed in the second and third quarters alone.
Offensively, the Panthers saw three players finish in double figures: Fakhry, Kohutis (11 points, four rebounds, three steals), and sophomore guard Amanda Ciser (19 points, two rebounds, five assists, one block, four steals), who led Bridgewater-Raritan in points, assists, and steals against Manville.
Ciser has now scored at least 16 points in three straight games to reach double figures for the eighth time in 2025-26, and after the Panthers’ victory over Manville, she now leads the team with 178 total points scored this season.
“Because we got a home game being the [No. 10] seed, that really motivated us to come out strong,” Ciser revealed of her team, which saw Watchung Hills Regional High School snag the last first-round bye and the No. 9 seed in the county tournament despite the Panthers’ 50-49 victory on the Warriors’ court back on January 20.
But on Thursday evening, to open the Somerset County Tournament, home-cooking could not have been more of a theme for Bridgewater-Raritan.
The Panthers’ 22 made field goals matched their season-high, which was also achieved in Bridgewater-Raritan’s 61-25 victory against Rahway High School back on January 3. Nine of these baskets were three-pointers: three each by Ciser and Kohutis, two by sophomore Sydney Albano (six points, three rebounds, two assists, one steal), and one more by Fakhry just past the midway point of the third quarter to cap off her big night.
Ciser and Fakhry each also scored four times from two-point land, where sophomore Sam Tremarco (five points, three rebounds, two assists, two steals), junior Maddy Corbitt (two points, four rebounds, two assists, one block, three steals), Hurlbut (two points, three rebounds, two assists, four blocks, one steal), and Kohutis also tallied points from.
Sophomore Erin Brocklehurst (one point, one rebound, three assists, one block, one steal) rounded out the scoring for Bridgewater-Raritan, which has not had a record under .500 this season since opening its promising 2025-26 campaign with a 51-25 loss against non-public crosstown-rival Pingry School.
Against teams from public high schools, however, Bridgewater-Raritan’s defense has now allowed an average of just 34.1 points per game following its big victory over Manville. Its 57 and 61 points scored against the Mustangs on Thursday evening and Rahway just this month, respectively, are also both the most scored under Coach Brooks’ leadership so far.
“That makes us very dangerous,” reacted Ciser to these numbers.
“Once we see one shot go down, we just keep shooting.”
Against Manville, Bridgewater-Raritan built leads of 14-6 and 32-7 after the first and second periods, and the Panthers connected on six field goals each in the first, second, and third quarters. They also pitched a shutout in the third quarter to extend their advantage to a whopping 46-7 heading into the fourth quarter, where Bridgewater-Raritan outscored Manville 11-7 to round off its big victory.
Most notably, despite being in complete control of the game heading into the locker room, the Panthers improved from 36.3% shooting in the first half to 58.9% (10-for-17) offensively in the second half.
Arguably, one of Bridgewater-Raritan’s best performances of the season, as it had on Thursday evening, could not have been a better way to bounce back.
Just before this game and the seeding of the county tournament, Bridgewater-Raritan had its longest losing streak of the season (three games). All of them faced non-public schools in the most challenging five-day stretch of their schedules at Rutgers Preparatory School, Stuart Country Day School, and Gill St. Bernard’s School. The Panthers lost these three aforementioned games by an average of 26 points, including to New Jersey’s fourth- and ninth-ranked teams, Rutgers Prep and Gill St. Bernard’s, respectively.
On top of this, Rutgers Prep and Gill St. Bernard’s are also the No. 1 and No. 2 seeded teams in the Somerset County Girls’ Basketball Tournament.
All key opportunities, however, for Bridgewater-Raritan to further improve in the long run, with the public state playoffs looming.
“We had that hard spurt, but I told our girls that we have to have a hard fight, regardless of who we are playing against and whatever the score may be,” Brooks went on to say. “Our 50% [plus] shooting in the second half came down to us tweaking things a little bit and staying locked in when it could have been easy for us to goof around, take bad shots, and play out of ourselves.”
“Instead, we forced our team to play within themselves, play hard, and get the job done.”
Now sitting at a 9-8 record heading into the final day of January, Bridgewater-Raritan is also in the hunt for a top-eight seed in the upcoming NJSIAA North New Jersey, Section 2, Group 4, Girls’ Basketball Tournament, which would result in home-court advantage for at least the opening round of the state sectional playoffs. Outside of a 43-26 defeat over the holiday break at Summit High School, which came without Ciser in the lineup, the Panthers have only lost two games by just one possession against teams from public high schools: once on the road at Belvidere High School (52-49), and once more at home in the closing seconds against Montgomery High School (38-36).
One year after the Bridgewater-Raritan boys’ basketball team finished over .500 for the first time since 2017-18, the Panthers’ girls’ basketball team will now try to match this feat, last accomplished on the girls’ side that same school year, when Bridgewater-Raritan finished 19-8, finished as a county semifinalist, and advanced to the state sectional semifinals.
While that roster was filled with juniors or seniors amongst its 14 players, Bridgewater-Raritan has just 10 players on its roster in 2025-26, with senior Bri Cacchio being the lone member of the Panthers’ graduating Class of 2026 in its lineup.
Including Fakhry, six of the Panthers’ 10 players are just sophomores. At the same time, Corbitt, Kohutis, and Sophia Kaschak are juniors, rounding out both the short- and long-term, which bodes well for Bridgewater-Raritan under Brooks’ leadership.
“I’ve learned a lot more about team camaraderie and working together as a team, because I am a new addition to the team,” Fakhry reflected on her takeaways so far in her first full varsity season for Bridgewater-Raritan. “I love playing with this team and winning just feels so good, especially when you’re at home. We want to continue that feeling, which is reflected during practice. We work hard, we come in, and we try our best.”
“Even if it does not go our way all of the time, we learn from our mistakes, and we carry it to the next game.”
No. 10-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan (9-8) currently sits at No. 7 in the North 2, Group 4, Power Points standings, which will be used to seed the state sectional playoffs after the cutoff date of Saturday, February 14. The Panthers have a massive opportunity in front of them next in the second round of the Somerset County Tournament at No. 7-seeded Bernards High School (15-1), which will be coming off a massive 57-55 overtime home victory against two-time reigning sectional champion and reigning Group 4 state champion Hillsborough High School on Thursday evening.
Bernards won its first 10 games of the season before falling to Roselle Park High School, 67-52, but it has won five consecutive games since that loss and is a perfect 10-0 against teams from the Panthers’ and Mountaineers' Skyland Conference.
The opening tip between Bridgewater-Raritan and Bernards will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, January 31, in Bernardsville. Second-seeded Gill St. Bernard’s awaits the winner of this game in the quarterfinal round of the Somerset County Tournament, which will be contested Saturday, February 7, in Gladstone.
“Getting this win makes Saturday so much easier, because we got the extra practice going against Bernards,” previewed Ciser of the Panthers’ second-round matchup.
“Now, we feel even more motivated.”