MAAC Tournament preview: Will Stags stay No. 1?
By Teddy Covers
The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Tournament tips off at the Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Connecticut Friday. The four days of tournament action will take place at the home of the Fairfield Stags, who--coincidentally--happen to be the No. 1 seed and the odds on favorite to earn to MAAC’s lone Big Dance bid.
The play-in games are Friday, as No. 7-seed Siena takes on No. 10-seed Manhattan and No. 8-seed Niagara takes on No. 9-seed Marist.
Manhattan went 3-15 in conference play as part of a dismal 6-24 campaign. Reports out of New York indicate that head coach Barry Rohrssen isn’t going to get a sixth year to turn the program around, expected to be fired after the Jaspers lose their next game.
It’s worth noting that the only conference win that the Jaspers have had since January came against the Saints and Manhattan covered the spread in both regular-season meetings with Siena. The Saints are the three-time defending champs in this league. But first-year head coach Mitch Buonaguro’s team was a pointspread disaster for much of the season, including a 3-12 ATS slump in its final 15 games and a 1-12 ATS mark as a favorite.
The other play-in game features Niagara and Marist. The young Purple Eagles were awful for most of the season, entering February with a 4-20 SU record. But Joe Mihalich’s squad came on strong down the stretch. It went 5-2 SU and 6-1 ATS in their final seven games, including a 17-point blowout win over Marist.
The Red Foxes improved from 1-29 last year to 5-26 this year, with a starting lineup featuring three sophomores and a freshman. But they’ve lost 13 straight MAAC games heading into the tourney. That includes blowout defeats by 15 points or more in six of their eight games away from home during that span.
The MAAC tournament’s busiest day will be Saturday, with four quarterfinal games on tap. Two of the matchups are already set with No. 3-seed Rider against No. 6-seed Canisius, and No. 4-seed St. Peter’s against No. 5-seed Loyola-Maryland.
Rider played great basketball down the stretch, winning 10 of its last 12 games. The Broncs were a veritable ATM playing away from home this year, with an 11-3 ATS mark on the highway, in sharp contrast to their dismal 1-10 ATS mark at home. Rider is 4-1 SU on this floor in Bridgeport in the Tom Dempsey era, including a 96-87 upset win over the top-seeded Stags last month.
Canisius isn’t likely to go down without a fight after earning its first opening-round bye since 1999. Head coach Tom Parrotta has five strong seniors (four of them starters), who could be playing their last game in a Golden Griffins uniform.
Like Rider, Loyola-Maryland played its best basketball away from home, notching SU wins at Niagara, Siena, Marist, Manhattan and its first-round opponent, St Peter’s, in conference play. The Greyhounds were the most balanced team in the conference this year, with six different players averaging between eight and 11 points per game.
St Peter’s top four scorers are all seniors for a veteran team with no recent history of postseason success. That being said, the Peacocks were the No. 1 ATS team in the conference, finishing with a remarkable 17-7 ATS mark. The two regular-season meetings between these teams were decided by a combined five points, with the road team winning both matchups.
That leaves MAAC bettors with only two teams left – the two best teams in the conference, awaiting Friday’s results to see who they’ll be matched up against. No. 2 seed Iona notched its seventh straight win and its 20th win of the season by beating No. 1 seed Fairfield in the regular-season finale last weekend.
The Gaels’ duo of junior point guard Scott Machado (13.7 ppg, 7.4 apg) and big man Michael Glover (17.9 ppg, 10.2 rpg) is as good as any tandem in the league. All five conference losses came by six points or less and the highest-scoring team in the conference hung tough on the road at Syracuse, losing by only six against a Big East powerhouse.
Fairfield lost to Siena in overtime in the MAAC Finals last year; a bitter loss in Albany. This year, the Stags will get the benefit of playing on their home floor before the tournament switches to a neutral-site location in Springfield, Massachusetts in 2012.
While Iona was outscoring its foes, Fairfield was out-defending them, holding opponents to 58 points per game on 40 percent shooting from the floor. It will need to bring its A-game on defense throughout the tournament because, even with the best point guard in the conference (sophomore Derek Needham), Fairfield suffered through more than its share of scoring droughts in tight games.