Saturday is when the excitement starts for six teams in Schuylkill League Boys’ basketball. With the two division system, there will now be three teams from Division 1 and three more from Division 2. The playoffs at Martz Hall in Pottsville are always impressive and this article gives you a glimpse into the 2025 playoffs.
Starting with Division 1, their teams are Mahanoy Area as the 1 seed followed with Minersville and Pottsville as 2 and 3. The runner-up from last year, Blue Mountain, will not be back into the playoffs along with semifinalist, North Schuylkill. Going over to Division 2, the Hilltoppers of Nativity are taking the 1 seed followed by Tri-Valley and Weatherly. Below is the schedule for the boys playoffs.
2/8/25
– Minersville (Div 1, 2 seed) vs Weatherly (Div 2, 3 seed) @ 11am
– Tri Valley (Div 2, 2 seed) vs Pottsville (Div 1, 3 seed) @ 12:30pm
2/12/25
– Nativity (Div 2, 1 seed) vs G1 winner @ 6:00pm
– Mahanoy Area (Div 1, 1 seed) vs G2 winner @ 7:30pm
2/14/25
– G3 winner vs G4 winner @ 7:30pm
If you don’t know a lot about Schuylkill League Boys Basketball, hopefully this brief article will help you gain some knowledge going into playoff time.
For the Golden Bears of Mahanoy Area, they need their best shooters Jace Yedsena and Tanner Zawada to constantly shoot the ball and rack up points because they have carried their team all year. For Minersville, no team can let Shazier Bethea start shooting because once he starts scoring three-pointers, he won’t stop which really helps them. The loss of Dawsyn Manning due to the transfer policy doesn’t help them as he is an aggressive player on both ends of the floor. Pottsville has three players averaging in double digits in PPG, those players are Christian Alvarez (14.6), Letrel Montone (11.6), and Ryder Bowers (11.2). The Crimson Tide also have other shooters so other teams need to play the perimeter well. Switching to Division 2, Nativity has Trey Keating and he’s an amazing shooter from anywhere on the court. He has a good three-point shot, and he can shoot anywhere from inside the paint to halfway between the basket and three-point line. The Hilltoppers also have Army West Point football commit Noah Dolbin who uses his height to his advantage to score and rebound. Tri-Valley needs to use Blake Schwartz more often underneath. He is tall and he isn’t used on the post enough. Weatherly has a solid defense from what I have watched, but they’ll need to play really aggressively when going against top offenses like Minersville. The Wreckers are also solid off of fast-breaks.
It is clear that these teams have lots of talent and it’ll be an exciting tournament at Martz Hall. Remember that D11 Sports will livestream the Semifinal and Finals of both the Boys and Girls tournaments, so be sure to tune into YouTube if you aren’t at those games.
