The Monday Morning Quarterback: Monmouth

14 March, 2016

Saint Joseph's Wins A10. Saint Bonaventure, Monmouth Get Snubbed!

The Saint Joseph's Hawks are the 2016 A10 Conference tournament champions. Photo: Atlantic 10 Conference

March 14, 2016
Peter Solari Follow @4PeteSakeNY

Brooklyn, NY - St. Joseph's turned the table on VCU Sunday, to capture the Atlantic 10 Conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Both teams were likely in the tournament regardless of the outcome, but the Hawks left nothing to doubt, at least for themselves, with an 87-74 win in the A10 Conference Championship at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Second seeded VCU was dominant in their first two games of the A10 tournament, wins over Massachusetts and Davidson, but fourth seeded Saint Joe's was in complete control of Sunday's final. A10 Player of the Year DeAndre Bembry led the way for the Hawks with a game high 30 points, and tournament MVP Isaiah Miles added 26 of his own, along with 12 rebounds. After missing the NCAA Tournament last year, Saint Joe's is back in the big dance for the 21st time overall.

Get the full game recap from The Score

Complete A10 Championship bracket courtesy of Wikipedia

For winning the league's automatic bid, Saint Joe's wins a trip halfway across the world to Spokane, Washington. The Hawks (27-7) were selected as an eight seed in the west region, and will open up the tournament Friday night at 10 PM against ninth-seeded Cincinnati (22-9), an at-large bid out of the American Athletic Conference.

VCU will also open their NCAA Tournament on Friday and will come out of the west region as well. The tenth-seeded Rams (24-10) will play seventh-seeded Oregon State (19-12), from the Pac 12 Conference, at 1:30 PM in Oklahoma City. VCU is making it's sixth straight tournament appearance, going back to their Final Four run in 2011.

And finally, A10 regular season champion Dayton, who were selected as a seven seed in the midwest region, will open the NCAA Tournament on Friday at 1 PM. The Flyers (25-7) are matched up with tenth seeded Syracuse (19-14), who have absolutely no business playing in this tournament.

Unfortunately, due to the unfounded presence of schools like Syracuse, as well as Tulsa, Saint Bonaventure got snubbed, and the A10 missed out on getting a fourth team into the field. Monmouth, out of the MAAC, was another notable snub.

University of Oklahoma Athletics Director/Chairman Joseph Castiglione, along with his tournament selection committee, did one of the worst jobs I've ever seen when it comes to selecting tournament fields. What we see is a clear bias in favor of the power conferences, and an outright slap in the face to mid-majors everywhere.

When Rutgers moved to the Big Ten Conference a couple of years ago, it made no sense to me. The Scarlet Knights are in way over their heads in that league, in both football and basketball, so what are the advantages to a move like that? Let me say, it all makes sense now.

Just by being in the Big Ten, Rutgers basketball could barely keep their heads above water for an entire season, and would still stand a better chance at an at-large tournament bid, than a team like Monmouth, who beat every high-major standing in their way, and ran the table in their league. There is that much of a bias against mid-major schools.

Of course the power conference schools should be rewarded for playing in difficult leagues, but mediocrity shouldn't be rewarded. Syracuse has a tremendous recruiting edge over a school like Monmouth, but selection committees never consider that. The fact that Syracuse can go out and get any player they want, means we should hold them to a higher standard. Sure their league is better, but so is their talent pool. Monmouth, on the other hand, gets to pick up all the crumbs that Syracuse drops. Yet, at the end of the day, Monmouth is still a better team than Syracuse is, unless you're Joseph Castiglione. They should've been rewarded for that. Syracuse and Tulsa should have been exiled to the NIT.

30 November, 2015

Watch Out For Monmouth

The Monday Morning Quarterback 6:25 AM

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.