What is the Northeast Conference on?

With the new college basketball season well underway, I am going to take a look at a conference that seems to so far be well overachieving. The Northeast Conference is a coalition of schools, a fair number of which are small Catholic universities like Mount St. Mary's, that stretches from New York to Virginia. Their basketball prowess is lacking, however. The Northeast fields teams that are always either #15 or #16 seeds in the NCAA Tournament and the last team in the conference to win a tournament game was Mount St. Mary's in the play-in game in the 2008 tournament.

So the Northeast is in that exclusive bottom tier of conferences like the SWAC, MAAC, America East, and so on. I say this because right out of the gate this year, they have been overachieving. I will highlight a few examples here.

Bryant 87, Vermont 64
While Vermont is in America East, it is unusual that a NEC team will beat down on another lower-conference team like this. This is the kind of score you would see when a power conference team would play Vermont.

Robert Morris 59, Kentucky 57
I know this happened last year but it still funny.

St. Francis (NY) 66, Miami 62 OT
Apparently Miami was hurting more than we thought. Miami last year won the ACC outright and made it to the Sweet 16. This year, they lost their first game at home to a team that finished in the bottom half of the NEC and didn't see any postseason play. Oh and St. Francis isn't even done there

#9 Syracuse 56, St. Francis (NY) 50
While they did lose this game, St. Francis led late 50-46 before Syracuse won the game on a 10-0 run. Just the fact that St. Francis was in the game late on the road against a top 10 team is stunning itself. Imagine if they had managed to hold on.

Indiana 73, LIU Brooklyn 72
This was at Indiana. I know Indiana lost its best players from last years Sweet 16 squad, but then they were also playing a team that was a #16 seed a year ago that lost to James Madison of the Colonial in a First Four game. The best part? LIU Brooklyn had the ball with a chance to win at the last second.

I will be keeping an eye on these teams as the season goes on. If they can continue their upstart ways, the team that ends up winning the conference tournament in March may end up with as high as a #13 seed, with ripe pickings for an upset. It will be entertaining to watch for sure.

Robert