America East conference tournament preview

This is part 14 of a 32-part preview.

Standings:
Vermont 15-1
UMBC 12-4
Hartford 11-5
Albany 10-6
Stony Brook 7-9
New Hampshire 6-10
UMass-Lowell 6-10
Maine 3-13

Format:
March 3, 6, and 10.  Better seed hosts each time.  Travel away!

Matchups:
1) Vermont vs. 8) Maine
4) Albany vs. 5) Stony Brook
3) Hartford vs. 6) New Hampshire
2) UMBC vs. 7) UMass-Lowell

The stakes:
A-East is usually pretty bad, this year they're okay at 23 CRPI.  UMBC, Hartford, Albany are in CBI/CIT range and/or 15 seed range, blah blah blah. 

Vermont is the thing to talk about.  Holding onto a top 50 RPI, and played 4 Group 1 games in the non-con.  Unfortunately, lost them all.  Non-con SoS was 88, and that's an unlucky 88.  They traveled a bunch.  Roadies at Kentucky, Bucknell, Marquette, Northeastern, neutral at Bonaventure....but they didn't win any of those.  Did poach N-NKU, @Harvard, and ran up 15 road/neutral wins.  They can easily push into the 12 line with those metrics, because the committee likes to see those things.  My money is on the 13 line.  Basically what I'm saying is, don't blindly pay attention to conference RPI and seed them on the 15 line, or even 14 line.  They're better than that.