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| Photo: Bleacher Report |
Peter Solari Follow @4PeteSakeNY
Albany, NY - Monmouth cruised to a victory 59-48 victory over Rider in the quarterfinals of the MAAC tournament on Friday night, moving one step closer to qualifying for an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament later this month. You can read more about that game at USA Today. Top seeded Monmouth (26-6) will play fifth seeded Fairfield (19-12) in Sunday's semifinal.
Friday's victory is good news for the Hawks, especially if you believe some of the latest projections. Both ESPN's Joe Lunardi and CBS Sports' Jerry Palm are still projecting Monmouth to be an 11-seed in the NCAA Tournament, but both are assuming that the Hawks will win the MAAC championship. And they may have to or things may get interesting in the upcoming week.
Here is Monmouth's resume, as tweeted by ESPN on Friday:
However, Bleacher Report has Monmouth's stock "down" in their latest projection. Monmouth has some great wins on their resume, there's no doubt about that. But they've got some pretty bad losses, too, and those can't just be overlooked.
At the end of the day, Monmouth is good enough for the NCAA Tournament, but with most leagues having not even started their conference tournaments yet, a lot could happen to shake things up in the next week, and if you're the Hawks, why leave anything to chance? It remains in coach King Rice and his Monmouth squad's best interest to bring everything they've got in the MAAC tournament, and to let the selection committee argue about other bubble teams like Michigan or Gonzaga.
Monmouth will take the court against Fairfield in the MAAC semifinal on Sunday at 4:30 PM in Albany, New York. You can watch the game live at ESPN3.com and heard on the Shore Sports Network.
