The final chapter for the graduating Class of 2026 high school boys’ basketball careers across the Garden State will soon be written.
Whether this will happen during the final week of February, the second week of March, or somewhere in between during the upcoming state tournament is yet to be determined.
After all, each of these playoff brackets will inevitably narrow down to just one survivor.
With the final month of the regular season upon us, the five players who are seniors on this season’s Bridgewater-Raritan High School boys’ basketball team will try to be among those last players standing to close out their last rides.
They were honored with their graduating Class of 2026 teammates on Tuesday evening, but regardless of when their high school playing careers will conclude, for this rising Panthers program, the stage will be set for one constant moving forward.
An expectation for continued and consistent success.
In addition to team statistician Ayyan Syed and team photographer/videographer Lexi Perle from the Class of 2026, players Alex Kolodziej, Josh Baker, Eli Milton, Brandon Ur, and Richie Gardner were recognized from this year’s senior Class during a pregame ceremony on Senior Night. This culminated in classmate Aditi Dhara singing the National Anthem before what turned out to be an entertaining contest against an up-and-coming North Plainfield High School squad.
“They’re really good examples of kids who are very dedicated to the program, and this team is a really good, full-time basketball group,” said Bridgewater-Raritan boys’ basketball head coach Gene McAteer before the game. “The amount of dedication and time that they spend in the offseason is tremendous, and when it comes to leadership, they are a really good class in terms of communicating and talking. Our record is [13-5 after Tuesday evening], but I would venture to guess that our guys are disappointed that we haven’t knocked off a top team yet, like Immaculata and Hillsborough. Games like these and last week at Ridge are ones we wish we had back, but we continue to play outstanding teams. I’m just really happy to see their success, especially because only five years ago, our team was a one-win team. It does feel like a long time ago, but I certainly haven’t forgotten it. When you go through those tough times, it gives you perspective, and you begin to appreciate it when you have a group of guys who are as dedicated as they are.”
“We’re very eager for and anticipate some big wins in the future.”
Most importantly, the Panthers ended Senior Night with another such result.
All five of the aforementioned senior players for Bridgewater-Raritan (13-5) not only earned the opportunity to start each half together and remain on the floor together one more time for the game’s final buzzer. After North Plainfield (11-11) broke a halftime tie with the third quarter’s first bucket, the Panthers drilled seven of their eight three-pointers after the break before ultimately holding off the Canucks for a hard-fought 70-56 victory on Senior Night Tuesday, February 3, at Vaughn Stapleton Gymnasium in Bridgewater.
“The objective is to win the game,” explained McAteer of his Senior Night gameday philosophy. “Our best lineup includes some juniors and a sophomore, but you want to recognize and honor our senior guys who have put in a lot of time and commitment. I feel like we took care of the balance of recognizing our seniors, and [43rd-year public address announcer Jim Gano] did an unbelievable job with our pregame ceremony tonight. But credit to North Plainfield – we asserted ourselves as the better team in the third quarter, but they are very scrappy.”
“I thought it might get to a 20-point game, and they did not go away, so I was wrong about that.”
Although North Plainfield failed to convert nine of its 21 free-throw attempts, including four in the first half, the visiting Canucks took a tie game into the locker room and did not go down without a fight on the road. In fact, the Canucks sank 55% of their shot attempts in the first half. They finished with double-digit outputs from senior Quadir Williams (17 points), sophomore Shakeem Hester (12 points), and junior Josh Canada (10 points), the son of North Plainfield head coach Derrick Canada.
After being held to 39% shooting from the floor in the first half, Bridgewater-Raritan responded with a 58% mark in the second half while dropping North Plainfield to just 37% (seven-for-19) shooting in the second half.
Gardner (21 points), Ur (13 points), and junior forward Tyler Hamby (17 points) all scored in double figures for Bridgewater-Raritan, which led for good after going on a 16-4 run early in the second half to take a 43-33 lead at the 4:18 timestamp of the third quarter.
That said, North Plainfield made Bridgewater-Raritan and its Class of 2026 members work for their victory on Senior Night, as the Canucks remained within 10 points for most of the second half despite the final score.
“They came out a little stronger because they knew it was our Senior Night, and they probably took a little pride in trying to ruin that,” reflected Gardner after the game, who ended the game leading the team with 307 total points scored so far (17.1 points per game) in 2025-26. “We were discouraged that we were tied at halftime, so that just fueled us to hit them that much harder in the second half. We got more steals and transition buckets, and we knew they weren’t going to continue to hit those wild shots in the second half.”
“If we just stuck to our game plan, we knew that we would win.”
In a rare game where he came off the bench behind his Class of 2026 honorees, Hamby still finished with his 15th double-figure output in the Panthers’ 18 games this season, and he ended the night averaging 14.3 points per game with a team-high 89 total rebounds and 29 total steals.
“They mean a lot to me,” Hamby said after the game about his senior teammates. “I love everyone, and I have a good relationship with them. It still feels like yesterday when we were all on J.V. and watching varsity play.”
“Now, we’re actually on the varsity team and putting on a show.”
Junior Jack Braswell (six points), junior Evan Woodring (four points), and sophomore Joe Chien (three points), along with Baker (three points) and Milton (three points), rounded out the scoring in the victory for Bridgewater-Raritan, which won a decisive 78-57 contest over the Canucks on the road at the beginning of last season.
As a further testament to the rise of the area’s boys’ basketball teams from public high schools this season, this rematch was anything but a decisive victory for Bridgewater-Raritan.
“They have really come far from where they were,” praised McAteer after the game of North Plainfield, which went 0-11 in the 2020-21 season, averaged just over seven victories in each of the following three seasons, but went 12-15 last season and is on pace for its best record since finishing 18-7 nine seasons ago. “Last year, we went into their place and beat them very easily, and they have recently been a little down overall. Coach Canada has been there for several years and has been dedicated to working hard with their team, and you can tell now that they have some basketball players out there.”
“They’re definitely scrappy and were here to play.”
Like its nearby neighbor in North Plainfield, Bridgewater-Raritan’s future is now a program that has come a long way since the turn of the century.
After finishing with a 14-13 record in 2017-18, the Panthers won just 10 total games over the next three seasons, a stretch marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, which notably hindered the progress of Bridgewater-Raritan and numerous other teams from local and statewide public schools across New Jersey. Afterwards, the Panthers improved to 12-15 record with a state playoff berth as the No. 11 seed in the NJSIAA North New Jersey, Section 2, Group 4, Boys’ Basketball Tournament in 2021-22, when teams like Piscataway High School, Plainfield High School, and Hillsborough High School were slotted below the Panthers and amongst the last few teams into that season’s playoff field.
Union High School, Dickinson High School, Perth Amboy High School, and Bayonne High School did not even qualify for the playoffs that year.
Fast-forwarding to the previous 2024-25 season, Bridgewater-Raritan tallied a 15-11 mark, its most victories since going 20-8 in 2017-18. In the playoffs, the Panthers faced fourth-seeded Piscataway High School, which they nearly upset as the bracket’s No. 13 seed.
No one from the senior Class was surprised about their potential, however.
Even if the road to get to where they are now was filled with obstacles.
As shared over the loudspeakers during the Senior Night pregame tribute, Milton was cut from the freshman basketball team, but he rebounded by making the junior varsity team as a sophomore and then the varsity lineup as a junior. None of the Panthers’ seniors are four-year varsity starters. However, Bridgewater-Raritan’s sub-varsity programs have proven to serve as valuable preparation for varsity competition amongst a lethal field in both Somerset County and the Skyland Conference alone.
Gardner, Milton, Ur, and Baker have been regular varsity members in each of the past two seasons, while the 2025-26 season has been the lone varsity season for Kolodziej, according to archived contests and statistics.
Despite the roadblocks they faced along the way, all of them have been leaders for a Bridgewater-Raritan program now poised for its most memorable season and finish in a long time.
“We’re a very improbable senior group who all worked our butts off,” reflected Gardner about his Class of 2026. “Every individual battled through a lot of adversity. We have three kids who were not on our eighth-grade team and two kids who were not on our freshman team. I didn’t really play my eighth-grade year and was at the end of the bench.”
“We had to work so hard to get to where we were, so that’s why we’re so mentally tough.”
They have all been rewarded with a successful 2025-26 season that has Bridgewater-Raritan on pace for its most victories in nearly a decade.
“This has easily the best team we have had in at least 10 years,” revealed McAteer, who is now in his 18th season as Bridgewater-Raritan’s head coach. “We’re shooting the ball over 45%, and you have to go back to somebody like [Bridgewater-Raritan Class of 2012 alum] Sal Vitello’s junior year in 2010-11, when our team made it to both a county and sectional final.”
But if there was one catch during this particular run, many of the Panthers’ rivals are also in the middle of meteoric rises back to the top, and that is not exclusive to this regular season.
Quite frankly, the same is truer than ever for Bridgewater-Raritan’s potential postseason competition.
Elsewhere in the Garden State, reigning Group 4 state champion Plainfield High School (17-3) is currently ranked No. 4 overall and as the top-ranked public school in all of New Jersey. Even more, no one stood above the Cardinals for a long stretch of time until they recently fell to rival Linden High School (13-7): now ranked No. 7. Rounding out the stronghold of public schools from Union County that are state-ranked teams is No. 18 Elizabeth High School (11-8), though Union High School (15-3) just dropped out after a stint within these rankings.
While these Middlesex County squads are unranked, Perth Amboy High School (19-4) just won its first division crown since 1993, and Piscataway High School (15-6), the team that edged Bridgewater-Raritan in the first round of last season’s state tournament, 60-56, is picking up right where it left off last year.
Unfortunately for Bridgewater-Raritan and these squads, despite residing in three different counties across North and Central New Jersey, they all have one thing in common besides trending upward as public school programs.
They will be in the same section of the state sectional tournament: the historic gauntlet that will be the North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 playoffs starting in the final week of February.
And do not forget about these two teams from Hudson County: Bayonne (16-5) and Dickinson (13-7), which were not even in the playoff field four seasons ago but would serve as host to a home playoff game if the state tournament were seeded today.
Even factoring in its amazing 2025-26 season, Bridgewater-Raritan currently sits at No. 11 in the stacked North 2, Group 4 standings, which will send its top-16 squads into the postseason after February 14. This means that the Panthers would have to travel for the first round of the state tournament if the playoffs were seeded today.
Of course, there is still plenty of time left for all teams across New Jersey to add to their resumes and improve their potential state tournament seeding.
As a further testament to what may be a more unpredictable 16-team bracket than the 68-team one basketball enthusiasts may fill out for their March Madness pools, the Panthers recently fell 51-40 at Ridge High School: a team that would be slotted as the No. 13 seed in this bracket if the North 2, Group 4 standings were finalized today.
With only eight spots available for the state sectional quarterfinals, out of the following nine teams alone amongst the eventual 16-team bracket in Plainfield, Piscataway, Bayonne, Union, Linden, Perth Amboy, Dickinson, Elizabeth, Bridgewater-Raritan, at least one of them is mathematically guaranteed to be one-and-done in the postseason.
One of the dark sides of an otherwise entertaining sport in high school boys’ basketball is further motivation for this battle-tested and hungry Bridgewater-Raritan squad to do two things when it matters most in late February and beyond.
Survive and advance.
“The private schools in high school football and boys’ basketball in particular have been dominant, but there are a lot of really good public schools, which is nice to see,” assessed McAteer of present-day New Jersey high school basketball, which currently has Bergen Catholic High School and Saint Peter’s Preparatory School as the top-two teams above a familiar foe in Gill St. Bernard’s School. “We’re hoping to be a top eight team in our section and to get a [first-round] home game, but you might get a home game and you might get [No. 18 ranked] Elizabeth coming in as the [No. 9] seed or something like that.”
“No matter who you play, it’s going to be somebody good – even in the first round.”
Somerset County and Skyland Conference rivals Gill St. Bernard’s (18-2), Rutgers Preparatory School (14-6), and reigning Group 4 state finalist Montgomery High School (17-3) alone entered Tuesday evening as New Jersey’s No. 3, No. 9, and No. 10 ranked teams, respectively.
Given they are each the top three seeded teams in the Somerset County Boys’ Basketball Tournament, they will be favored by seeding alone to advance to the semifinals, but Bridgewater-Raritan will head into the postseason with at least one rep against each of these teams. Whether they will get another crack at Gill St. Bernard’s is yet to be determined given the Knights are on the other side of the Panthers’ county tournament bracket, but Bridgewater-Raritan would be hungry to avenge a loss at home, 74-46, against Gill St. Bernard’s in mid-January.
Next up for Bridgewater-Raritan (13-5) will be another critical stretch, which will start at home against Montgomery at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, February 5, in Bridgewater. The Panthers will then get a critical opportunity to avenge a respectable 72-56 loss at Rutgers Prep at 1 p.m. Saturday, February 7, in Somerset in the quarterfinal round of the Somerset County Tournament.
Bridgewater-Raritan will then travel to rival and Skyland Conference Raritan Division leader Pingry School (11-6) at 4:15 p.m. Tuesday, February 10, in Basking Ridge.
“All three of these games are gigantic opportunities for a big win against top teams in the county,” previewed McAteer of this slate. “Our team is good, but we are the [No. 7] seed in Somerset County and the [No. 11] seed in the [North 2, Group 4] section of our state. If you just look at our record, you might think that our team is okay. But we are one of these top teams, and our group is poised for a big win against a good team.”
“Hopefully that will happen soon, and maybe more than once.”
Heading into the cutoff date for games played toward state tournament seeding, which will be Saturday, February 14, the Panthers will host crosstown rival Somerville High School (13-7) at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, February 12.
However, the winner of the Panthers vs. Rutgers Prep quarterfinal in the Somerset County Tournament would not only advance to the semifinal round. It would square off against either third-seeded Montgomery or sixth-seeded Hillsborough in the semifinal round Saturday, February 14, with one last chance to boost its state-tournament resume.
“It’s really big for us, because going into this year, we worked really hard in the offseason,” Hamby said of the opportunities that lie ahead for Bridgewater-Raritan. “We expect very highly of ourselves, but we want to excel from last year’s group.”
“We want to get as far as we can and compete at our highest.”
Concluded Gardner: “We know that we can compete against these teams and are really looking forward to these games.”
“Every game is a huge opportunity for us to show others what we can do, and who we believe we are as a group.”