November 30, 2015
Peter Solari Follow @4PeteSakeNY
Watch out for the Monmouth Hawks! Who?
The Hawks of Monmouth University, a private university with about 4,500 students in West Long Branch, NJ, have been taking the nation by storm lately! The season is very young, but Monmouth has strung together some big-time wins that just might serve them well come March.
Monmouth (4-2) knocked off USC (5-2) 83-73 in Florida Sunday, to take third place in the Advocare Invitational. The win caps off a wild weekend for the Hawks, who also upset #17 Notre Dame (4-2) 70-68 in the opening round of the tournament on Thursday. Monmouth also lost a close one to Dayton (5-1) 73-70 on Friday. Hawks' junior Justin Robinson scored an Advocare Invitational record 77 points over the three games.
Sunday's matchup with USC was the second time the teams have met in the past two weeks. The Trojans took care of Monmouth 101-90 in Los Angeles on November 16th, but the trip out west wasn't all-bad for the up-start Hawks. They knocked off college basketball powerhouse UCLA (4-3) 84-81 in overtime on November 13th. That gives them two victories over Pac 12 teams on the year, in three games against that league. They've also got a victory over a top 25/Big East team in #17 Notre Dame. They lost a close one to a very good Atlantic 10 program in Dayton, and they will play Big East powerhouse Georgetown, as well as in-state foe Rutgers, of the Big Ten, in December. These are the type of schedules and wins, up until now at least, that will garner a mid-major program serious consideration from the NCAA Tournament committee in March. While they likely have their minds set on winning the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and earning the league's automatic bid, things don't always work out the way you planned come tournament time.
Monmouth was a longtime member of the Northeast conference (NEC), but made the move to the MAAC in 2013. It's definitely a step up for the Hawks, one which should pay dividends in the long run. The NEC is the NCAA's doormat, for lack of a better term. Year after year their conference champion just get's thrown to the wolves like a sacrificial lamb, garnering a #16 seed so one of the best teams in the country can carve them up. The MAAC on the other hand, has historically been more respected. MAAC champions are typically give a seed between 13 and 15 in the NCAA tournament. It doesn't sound much better, but a #16 team has never won an NCAA Tournament game. It's not uncommon, however, for a #13, 14, or 15 seed to win a game in the big dance. And the MAAC is no stranger to upsets in March. Sienna, Niagara, and Manhattan have all won games in the NCAA Tournament in recent years.
Coming out of the MAAC, Monmouth would be a long shot for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The league has only received two at-large bids to the big dance in their 35 year history. The first was two decades when the Fran Fraschilla-led Manhattan Jaspers were invited 1995 dance, where they upset Oklahoma in the first round. That team was 25-4 and ran through the MAAC, going 12-2 in the conference, but they didn't have a single victory that season even close to the magnitude of Monmouth's win over Notre Dame, and their schedule wasn't as impressive either. In 2012, Scott Machado's Iona Gaels received an at-large bid to the tournament with a 25-7 record (15-3 in the MAAC). That team played a pretty difficult schedule, and pulled off some nice wins against Nevada, Maryland, and St. Joseph's. They also played a good Purdue team, but unlike this year's Monmouth squad, they didn't have a single top 25 team in the regular season. The 2016 season is looking as though it might be one of great parity. There aren't If Monmouth has 25 wins at the end of the year, but falls short of the MAAC tournament title, they'll have one hell of a case for an at-large bid to the big dance.
Of course there's a long way to go and a lot of basketball to played before March, but it's still fun to speculate. Only time will tell what the 2016 Hawks will ultimately be, but things are undoubtedly trending up at the Jersey Shore these days, evident by the mere fact that we're talking about Monmouth basketball in late November.
