CSM Pick 'Em: Round 2 Playoffs, 2025
- Clutch Sports Staff
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Second round playoff football is drawing near with over a dozen teams still representing Central Illinois.
Fourteen teams in the Clutch Sports Media coverage area won their first-round games. That marks the most first-round playoff wins from the area in at least the last decade after 12 teams from the Peoria and Bloomington/Normal area kicked off the playoffs with a win last year.
Class 5A owns a lion’s share of the local teams still remaining, with Washington, Peoria High, Morton and Bloomington still alive. Each of those teams won convincingly in the first round and are set up with intriguing second-round matchups.
Washington hosts Mahomet-Seymour, a 7-3 team who has played one of the tougher schedules anywhere. Peoria High and Morton will square off in the unofficial “Adam O’Neill Bowl” as Morton’s head coach was formerly an assistant at Peoria High during the 2010s. Bloomington will hit the road to take on Oak Forest in a Central Illinois vs. suburban Chicago matchup.
Class 2A features a strong helping of area teams, including undefeated Farmington — who survived on a blocked kick in the fourth quarter — and El Paso-Gridley, plus Tri-Valley, who is playing its best football at the right time.
Bloomington Central Catholic, Dee-Mack and Heyworth — who won just its second playoff game in program history last week — are small schools set to host strong opponents in the second round.
Metamora and Peoria Notre Dame look to cause some upheaval in Class 4A with upset wins as the Redbirds travel to No. 2-seed Morris, rekindling an old playoff rivalry, while the Irish host No. 1-seed Lombard Montini.
Dunlap and Normal West, both in Class 6A, look to pull out wins on the road and continue their seasons, which have both been sneakily good enough to make a deep postseason run.
Clutch Sports Media will be providing a free, live broadcast of Washington’s game against Mahomet-Seymour in our WMBD Game of the Week. Kickoff is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday with pregame coverage starting at 1:45. Viewers can watch the game on centralillinoisproud.com/games/, or on the WMBD+ app on smart TVs.
Our staff has made their predictions for all 13 area first-round playoff games with their comments also listed below. Broadcasters for our broadcasted games are ineligible to pick winners for the game that they are broadcasting and will pick the winner of an extra game instead.
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