Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Metro Atlantic Athletic conference tournament

This is part 9 of a 32-part series covering each conference and conference tournament.  These previews are meant to provide every bracketologist with the information they need to make informed projections about the teams of the conference.

The final standings:
Iona 17-3
Manhattan 15-5
Quinnipiac 14-6
Canisius 14-6
Siena 11-9
Marist 9-11
St Peter's 9-11
Rider 9-11
Monmouth 5-15
Fairfield 4-16
Niagara 3-17

Tournament format:
All 11 will be traveling to a neutral site in Springfield, MA.  Top 3 get a first round bye, naturally.  First round is March 6, followed by quarterfinals thorugh finals on March 8-10.

The matchups:
8) Rider (13-16) vs. 9) Monmouth (11-20)
7) St Peter's (13-16) vs. 10) Fairfield (7-24)
6) Marist (12-18) vs. 11) Niagara (6-25)

1) Iona (20-9) vs. 8/9 winner
4) Canisius (20-11) vs. 5) Siena (15-16)
2) Manhattan (22-7) vs. 7/10 winner
3) Quinnipiac (19-10) vs. 6/11 winner

The stakes:
The MAAC is back to being a non-factor in the at-large pool.  However, Iona, Manhattan, Quinnipiac, and Canisius all have legitimate shots at a 13 seed, and would all probably get it.  The others would be much farther down, naturally.  Manhattan won at LaSalle, Canisius N-Georgia St, Quinnipiac won at Vermont, etc.

The top 4 have RPIs at or better than 100.  Manhattan at 104 and Canisius at 98 as I type this, along with Iona and Manhattan well within the top 75.  They built pretty strong computer profiles again with resumes that don't quite support those numbers.  Kudos to them, because it's going to produce a good seed.  The MAAC stayed as a top 15 conference this year, which is the way to avoid the death lines of the 15 and 16 seeds.

Iona obviously has their NIT bid in hand just in case, but Manhattan and their 77 are on the NIT bubble too.  I think eventually they'll not make it as an at-large, but they're close.  Between these top 4, they will have solid CBI/CIT representation, at least.  They're all just good enough to miss the NIT, alas.  Siena meanwhile would need 2 upsets to be CIT eligible.

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