The 2019-2020 basketball season was certainly full of thrills for the boys North Tier League.
Coudersport won its fifth consecutive league crown, but suffered its first NTL loss in roughly five years at the hands of Cameron County — a streak lasting 77 games, while plenty of other players and teams turned in exciting moments this season, as well.
This year’s NTL wasn’t officially decided until the final week of the season. Coudy (20-5, 15-1) took the league crown for the fifth straight season, but Cameron County (21-6, 14-2) gave the Falcons a run for their money.
The league likely could have been decided sooner, but the Red Raiders — who could have tied for the NTL crown if not for a surprising loss to Smethport — upset the Falcons in Emporium, 40-35. Fittingly, it was Cameron County who had last defeated Coudersport back in February of 2015.
Those two teams were the only pair from the NTL to move on to the PIAA state tournament. Coudy was ousted by District 10 runner-up Farrell in Class AA, while Cameron County dropped a heartbreaker to the WPIAL’s Bishop Canevin in Class A. Each had fared well in the District 9 playoffs, as Coudy placed third in Class AA while Cameron County made its first Class A championship game appearance since 2015 before falling to Elk County Catholic.
On the note of the Hubbers, perhaps no team managed a better ending to the league slate than Smethport. The Hubs won their final seven league games to finish at 11-5 in league play, good for third place, before ending the year at 13-10 overall. Their season ended with a loss to Ridgway in the D9 Class AA playoffs.
By the way, that was all without a scorer in the league’s top seven — a credit to Jay Acker and his team for overcoming that obstacle.
As for the rest of the NTL, the three aforementioned teams were joined by Otto-Eldred (11-11, 9-7), Austin (12-12, 6-10) and Northern Potter (9-14, 6-10) in the D9 playoffs.
Of those latter three, only Austin picked up a postseason victory — a 56-53 comeback victory over NoPo in a play-in game that marked the program’s first postseason win since 2001.
The best part? For as competitive as the 2019-2020 season was, next year promises to be just as fun.
Only two of the league’s top seven scorers graduate, meaning plenty of playmakers return to the court a year from now.
The two leaving — Port Allegany’s Howie Stuckey (19.1 ppg, third-leading scorer) and Cameron County’s Dino Brown (18.6 ppg, fourth-leading scorer) — are certainly heavy losses for their respective teams, but each returns plenty of other playmakers to the mix.
Adding to the competitive balance of next season is the fact that the remaining five top scorers are each from a different team.
Northern Potter’s Carter Anderson led the NTL in scoring this year with 20.8 points per game, but the Panthers do lose a key senior in Ezra Sprow. Still, with the return of both Anderson and fellow guards Ryan Langworthy and Tre Slawson, NoPo will figure to build on its late-season run in which it won its final three league games.
Meanwhile, in Coudersport, point guard Hayden Keck averaged 20.2 points a game in his junior season to finish as the league’s second-leading scorer. The Falcons do lose some key seniors in Kolby VanWhy, Daniel Frame, Travis Gleason and Dillon Keglovits, but still return enough playmakers to next year’s squad to expect to remain in the mix.
Their NTL rivals in Emporium lose Brown, but bring back Caden Beldin, who finished sixth overall in league scoring average with 16.7 points per game. Beldin will be joined by Hayden Brown (9.1 ppg) and Dylan Guisto (7.7 ppg), giving the Red Raiders reason to believe they’re contenders next season, as well.
Austin brings back its leading scorer, Jackson Glover, whose 17 points per game were fifth highest in the NTL, while O-E’s Jake Merry was seventh with 15 per game.
Though the Panthers will be retooling a fair amount, Glover is enough of a spark that they should be able to still compete.
In Duke Center, Merry will be joined by returners Braden Maholic (9.6 ppg), Cole Sebastian (8.1 ppg) and Gavin Jimerson (7.7 ppg), leaving the Terrors definitely looking forward to the future.
With so many playmakers back at so many different schools, expect next season to be an even tighter race at the top.
(Joel Whetzel, a Bradford Era sports reporter, can be reached at jwhetzel@bradfordera.com.)
