This season, mid-major college basketball hasn’t had quite the impact on the college basketball landscape when compared to previous years. Sure, you have programs like Gonzaga, Creighton, and Wichita State, but overall there isn’t an impressive stable to mid-major schools that are primed to mess up people’s NCAA brackets come March. Continue reading “Mid-Major College Basketball Failures: The Worst of the Worst”
Tag: Binghamton
America East Tourney Prediction
The America East tournament kicks off on Thursday night in Hartfort, CT with the 8/9 game featuring UMBC and Binghamton. The Retrievers and Bearcats will be playing to get into the quarterfinals and the opportunity to keep an incredibly unlikely run to the title alive. Between the two of them they reached the AE title game just 16 times in 10,000 sims. UMBC won the title once and that was it. That means top seed Stony Brook has a huge advantage, and that home court advantage in the finals sure comes in handy.
Binghamton’s big win helps Stony Brook
Ken Pomeroy gave Binghamton just a 4% chance of beating Vermont tonight at home, but the Bearcats pulled off the stunning (appropriate use) upset 57-53. The win broke Vermont’s 10-game winning streak and coupled with Stony Brook’s road win at Hartford gave the Seawolves the inside track for the top seed in the America East tournament and an automatic bid to the NIT.
Of course the first one of those things is much more valuable than the second. SBU still has to get one more win on Sunday against Maine, but if Stony Brook can get through that one and the quarterfinals and semifinals of the America East tourney in Hartford they’d then host the finals. Home court advantage is huge. It might’ve been the difference between the Seawolves making their first ever NCAA tournament last season and Boston University surviving.
Home court has already proved to be important in America East play. All three of Vermont’s conference losses have come on the road as have both of Stony Brook’s. The Catamounts won by 19 the last time SBU and Vermont played, but back on January 2 the Seawolves pulled out a six-point victory.
You know how big the impact is of being about to play your championship on your home court is? Something like 30% according to Ken Pomeroy. Your typical 50/50 game becomes 65/35 or so. That’s a huge change. It’s going to help Stony Brook possibly reach its first NCAA tournament.
Binghamton provided a gift tonight. The Seawolves have to take advantage of it and take care of business moving forward.
Binghamton and Towson in NYC tonight
If you want to see teams that went winless for a while or are winless, well then Long Island is the place to be tonight. Binghamton comes to Stony Brook and Hofstra hosts Towson. Even though Towson beat UNC-Wilmington last Saturday, most of what I said here about the two teams still applies. A couple good Towson Twitter follows, in case you need them are: @TowsonTigerZone and @TowsonTV_Damon. If I were you, I’d also follow the Press & Sun-Bulletin’s Lynn Worth (@psblynn) for all your news about the winless Bearcats. Here’s his preview of the game. Also, Unranked AE wrote way more about the SBU-Binghamton game than I did, so check that out!
Checking up on winless Binghamton and Towson
The number of undefeated teams is down to just one thanks to Syracuse’s loss to Notre Dame on Saturday, but the number of winless teams is still holding steady at two. Binghamton and Towson can’t find a way to get a conference win in America East or the CAA respectively and it’s starting to become time to worry. Ken Pomeroy now gives the Tigers a greater than 50% chance of going winless during the regular season. Let’s dive a little deeper into both of these teams.
Continue reading “Checking up on winless Binghamton and Towson”
Friday round up: 5 wins
It was a banner day for New York City’s mid-majors last night as they rung in the New Year with style. All five schools in action pulled out victories. It was an impressive display of how far some of these young teams have developed.
The winless ones
It’s that time in the season again when people start tracking the winless teams and seeing if its possible that they’ll go the entire season without notching a victory. Ballin’ is a Habit listed the 18 winless teams, but it was this notice from UMBC that made me really start thinking about teams with a 0 in the win column. Did you know that three of them (Binghamton, UMBC and Hartford) play in the America East Conference. Three others (Alabama State, Alcorn State and Grambling) play in the SWAC. Well, there’s more you probably don’t realize!
NYC Buckets Archive 