The Guaynabo Mets are set to open the 2025 season—the BSN’s 95th and the Mets’ 90th—on March 16.
Guaynabo looks to build on a strong 2024 campaign that saw them finish first in the B Division with 21 wins but lose a hard-fought quarterfinal matchup to the Leones de Ponce in seven games.
Head coach José Juan “J. J” Barea, a Puerto Rico native and NBA champion, returns for his second season at the helm for a Mets squad looking to get back to the playoffs in a revived BSN that has plenty to celebrate as it reflects on nearly a century of professional basketball on the island.
The BSN launched its 2025 season with a short film that pays tribute to the league’s fans and what the league has meant to Puerto Rico throughout its 95-year history.
Puerto Rico’s top-tier men’s basketball league, the BSN has undergone a revival in recent years, with attendance more than doubling from 2018 to 2023 and the number of teams expanding from nine to twelve over the same period.
The 2025 season marks a milestone for the Mets as well. Guaynabo returned as a BSN franchise in 2019 after a four-year hiatus, but the team’s roots go back to its founding in 1935, five years after the BSN played its first season in 1930.
“We’re in Guaynabo, and we always want to aim higher. We want to reach the top and walk away with the trophy. That’s our goal, that’s what we’re working toward.”
The Mets won three championships in the 1980s—considered the heyday of the league—and has reached the BSN finals once, in addition to making two semifinal appearances, since being reinstated.
For the BSN 2025 season, Guaynabo brings back Jaysean Paige, Khary Mauras, Ryan Pearson, Ismael Romero, and Jose Roman, all of whom were strong contributors last year.
Paige led the team in points scored, averaging nearly 19 per game to go along with 3.5 assists, while Romero led the team in rebounds (12.3 per game). As a team, the Mets led the league in steals per game (7.4) and blocks per game (4.2) while playing a fast-paced, aggressive style on offense.
Guaynabo bolstered its 2025 roster with the additions of veterans Jose “Money” Rodriguez and Benjamin Mojica Colón and recent draftees Bobby Harris and Matthew Lee. Guaynabo will also trot out three import players—Bryce Cotton, Derrick Williams, and William Douglas—to start the season due to a league rule change that allows three imports instead of the previous two, one of whom must be of Latin decent.
Mets assistant coach Roy Casanova told El Vocero that the team’s early elimination last year from the playoffs provides lessons heading into 2025.
“We’re in Guaynabo, and we always want to aim higher,” Casanova said. “We want to reach the top and walk away with the trophy. That’s our goal, that’s what we’re working toward.”
Among the lessons they learned, according to Casanova, is the importance of the point guard position, which prompted the team to sign Cotton this offseason.
An international standout Casanova called “an impact signing,” Cotton averaged 28.6 points per game playing for the Perth Wildcats in Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL). The Arizona native also won five league MVP awards, three championships, and eight scoring titles playing in the NBL. In 2025, he set a club record with his seventh Wildcats Club MVP.
Derrick Williams is a is a 6’7” forward who brings experience, versatility, and unselfish play. The second overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2011 NBA draft, Williams reached the NBA Finals in 2017 as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers and has played overseas since 2018, most recently with the Greek Basket League, where he averaged 12.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 1.2 assists.
The Mets’ third import for 2025, William Douglas, is a 6’5” swingman who spent six years at the collegiate level, playing for the SMU Mustangs and Prairie View Panthers, before joining the Guangzhou Loong Lions in the Chinese CBA and averaging 16.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4 assists in his lone season there.
Emmanuel Andújar, Jermaine Miranda, Carlos Lugo, and Brandon Boyd round out a 2025 Mets team looking to win their first title since 1989.
The journey back to the finals begins at the Arquelio Torres Ramírez Coliseum on Sunday, March 15 when Guaynabo visits the Athletics in San Germán. Tipoff is set for 6:00 PM.
Guaynabo’s home opener is scheduled for Wednesday, March 19th in a showdown with Division B rival Gigantes de Carolina, a team that finished a game behind the Mets last year during the regular season and were bounced from the playoff semifinals.
With Barea at the helm and a refreshed roster that is built to win now, Mets Nation will be rocking Mario “Quijote” Morales Coliseum as Guaynabo pursues its fourth title in franchise history and a return to the team’s golden era that has remained just out of reach—but is in the team’s sights heading into what fans hope will truly be a season for the ages.
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