It’s getting down to crunch time for Liberty and Freedom on the hardwood and time isn’t on their side.

The Hurricanes (7-8) and Patriots (6-9) have roughly three weeks left on the calendar and if they’re going to make a run at the playoffs, each game will have significant impact on their postseason ramifications, as both teams don’t have much room for error the rest of the way.

The Pates have lost three straight and six of eight to push them to the bottom of the District 11 6A rankings heading into this week. Things don’t get any easier either, as they took on Bethlehem Catholic (11-2) on Tuesday and face Nazareth (9-6) on Friday night. Losses to both teams would eliminate the Pates from the postseason.

Liberty, on the other hand, has a tough stretch to finish the season, but the Hurricanes could sneak their way in.

That starts with this week’s games against Easton (8-6) and Northampton (11-3), which will surely keep the pressure on Chad Landis’ squad to bring their best effort every night.

“These next two weeks are really important to us,” Landis said. “We have some rematch games against teams in our division that we lost the first time we played. We’ll get a chance to see if we have improved at all from the beginning of the season.

“Every game is important for us. The good part is it’s almost like the playoffs start early for us, we will need to play at a high level consistently in order to have a record good enough to make the post season.”

Liberty will need to catch some divisional wins if they want to extend their season, as they’re 1-4 in Steel Division play heading into this week. Freedom is 2-4 in the division, while Bethlehem Catholic is 4-0, as they suffered their first EPC loss of the season last Friday to Northampton 52-51.

With the EPC always figuring to be a battle every night, Landis and company know what it’s going to take in order to make a late season push.

“If we can play more consistently down the stretch then I believe we deserve to make the playoffs and we will,” he said. “If we do not play consistently down the stretch and don’t do the little things from an effort standpoint, we won’t make the playoffs and probably don’t deserve to. The players and coaches both know that is the key. When we play hard and do the little things we have been pretty good for stretches this year. When we don’t, we have struggled.”