How to center JPanel vertically

Question

I`d like to align a JPanel to center. I`ve tried BorderLayout but I don`t want this JPanel to be forcefully extended - I want it to stay the way it is.
In this JPanel I have a few buttons that create a kind of menu and I want this menu to be in the center of the Frame. In the future I`ll probablt want to add some stuff at the bottom, top, left and right, so BorderLayout seems the perfect solution. The problem is that I don`t want the buttons to be resized to fill out the whole center area.
I`ve made a quick layout of what I mean here:
http://ilozen.republika.pl/stuff/layout.GIF

Answer 1

Here`s the full code in one file that shows the problem.
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.FlowLayout;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
public class Problem {     
     public static void main(String[] args) {
       SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
               private GameWindow gameWindow;               
            public void run() {
                gameWindow = new GameWindow();
class GameWindow extends JFrame{
     public GameWindow() {
          setExtendedState(MAXIMIZED_BOTH);                    
          getContentPane().add(new MainMenu(this));          
          setVisible(true);
class MainMenu extends JPanel{
     private JFrame parentFrame;
     private JPanel buttonsPanel;
     private JPanel buttons;
     private JButton newGameButton;
     private JButton loadGameButton;
     private JButton optionsButton;
     private JButton exitButton;
     private final int numberOfButtons = 4;
     public MainMenu(JFrame parent) {
          parentFrame = parent;
          buttons = new JPanel();
          newGameButton = new JButton("NEW GAME");          
          loadGameButton = new JButton("LOAD GAME");
          optionsButton = new JButton("OPTIONS");
          exitButton = new JButton("EXIT");          
          buttons.setLayout( new GridLayout(numberOfButtons,1));
          buttons.add(newGameButton);
          buttons.add(loadGameButton);
          buttons.add(optionsButton);
          buttons.add(exitButton);
          buttonsPanel = new JPanel(new FlowLayout());
          buttonsPanel.add(buttons);
          setLayout(new BorderLayout());
          add(buttonsPanel);          
}