NCAA Tournament berths are on the line as the MAAC men's and women's basketball championships get underway in Springfield.
SPRINGFIELD – Will the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference get two bids for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament?
The MAAC Championships, which begin Thursday at the MassMutual Center, will answer that question.
Play tips off at noon in the women’s bracket, with the men’s tournament getting under way Friday. The championship games will be played Monday – the women at noon and the men at 7:30 p.m.
The winners earn automatic bids to the NCAA Division I Tournament. At-large bids for the MAAC, or any mid-major conference, are about as rare as a near-snowless winter in New England, but they remain a possibility.
Marist (22-7, 17-1), winner of the last five MAAC women’s tournaments, is the top seed once again, but No. 2 Fairfield (22-7, 15-3) has given the Red Foxes all they can handle this season.
Iona (24-6, 15-3) is the top seed in the men’s tournament and probably the only team that could get into the NCAA Tournament without winning the conference’s automatic bid
“I want to make sure (the MAAC) gets one (bid), and that’s Iona. I don’t trust the NCAA, if we got to the final and lost, to put us in,” Iona coach Tim Cluess said.
“I think if Iona gets knocked off in our finals, they have a pretty good shot at an at-large. Their resume is fairly impressive with the early-season wins they had,” MAAC commissioner Richard Ensor said. “I think in the last power ratings I saw by the NCAA they were in the 40s, and that’s typically in the region for an at-large bid, but it’s hard to predict because of what might happen in all the other leagues.”
Upsets are certainly possible. Fairfield won the regular season last year, but fell to St. Peter’s in the tournament. The Peacocks went on to upset Iona in the final and advance to the NCAA.
“If you look at the senior-laden teams that are out there or just the ones we’re talking about, all have a lot of experience. Four or five teams have most of their experience back, so I think there’s more experience than last year,” Cluess said. “Last year, I thought St. Peter’s was the most experienced team and had all seniors. I thought they underachieved during the regular season and then played well in the postseason, something I thought they should have been doing all year with the talent they had.
“It didn’t surprise me that they were the team to win the whole thing. They had a four (power forward) man step out and knock down 3s, something most teams don’t have. That’s kind of why they won – their four man got on fire those last couple of games and was knocking down 3s and that was the reason they beat us and beat Fairfield.”
While Iona, No. 2 Loyola (21-8, 13-5), third-seeded Manhattan (20-11, 12-6) and No. 4 Fairfield (17-13, 12-6) are all capable of winning the men’s tournament, Rider (13-18, 10-8), Siena (13-16, 8-10) and Niagara (13-8, 8-10) can’t be overlooked.
“It should be a pretty wide-open tournament, but Iona is still, I would think, the favorite. But two or three teams could knock them off along the way,” Ensor said. “The trick of the MAAC Tournament is you have to win three in a row to move on to the NCAA.”
The MAAC Tournament is being played on neutral ground for the first time since the late 1980s when it was held at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. This is the first year of a three-year agreement to play the championships here.
Springfield, which had hosted the NCAA Division II men’s basketball championship the last 10 years, chose to forego the Elite Eight for a Division I tournament. And while the MAAC isn’t the ACC or the Big East, there are plenty of talented teams and players to make a trip downtown worthwhile for even the casual basketball fan
“(Siena’s OD) Anosike is a great rebounder, (Iona’s Scott) Machado is one of the best assist guys in the country – we got some interesting statistical guys in our league,” Loyola coach Jimmy Patsos said. “(Iona’s Mike) Glover shoots among the best in the country percentage-wise. It’s a great basketball league. I came here from the ACC after 13 years and I didn’t realize what a great league the MAAC is.”