The Northampton boys basketball team enters the 2024-25 season trying to replicate the success of last year’s squad that went 14-10 overall and qualified for both districts and EPCs, but will have to do it with a mostly new cast of characters.

The K-Kids graduated 72% of their offensive production and will need their two returning starters, juniors Noah Walakovits and Brady Simock, to provide both leadership and offensive punch.

Juniors Leo Regec and Korbin Sollars as well as sophomore Ethan Raphun and freshman Jake Raysely are expected to play significant minutes and will need to adjust to varsity level basketball quickly. Ronnie Jones is the only senior on the roster and impressed the coaching staff with his dedication over the summer.

Juniors Logan Walter and James Everett and sophomore Marcus Ramos round out the varsity roster.

As was the case last year, the Kids are undersized up front and will need to rely on quickness, effort, and their signature matchup zone.

Head coach Matt Scholl explained.

“We’ve almost just adapted to being smaller,” he said. “It’s going to be three-pointers and transition. We don’t have many big kids here. Brady can post up, we’ve been working with him on that. It’s a work in progress.

“We have the talent. The talent’s there. If they don’t do the little stuff, they aren’t going to be able to use that talent. That’s what we’re trying to stress to them. We can beat teams. We did OK in the summer. We did better than average everywhere we’ve gone so far, but it’s different when teams are scouting.”

One big change for the K-Kids is that they swap places with Dieruff and move to the Northampton County division of the EPC with Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Bethlehem Catholic, and Nazareth.

Scholl spoke about the switch.

“Our schedule is tough this year because of non-division,” he said. “We still play Parkland. We still play Central. We play Whitehall as part of the Cement Belt. Going over to the other division, I don’t know what to expect. Each division is a little bit different in terms of style. It scares us a little bit.”

The Kids didn’t find their first game of the year too scary as the kicked off the season on Monday with a strong 65-43 win against Easton. Walakovits led the way with 27 points.