America East Basketball: Vermont, Stony Brook, 2019 conference tournament favorites

Following last year’s greatest upset in tournament history, America East Basketball will look to send someone dancing in the tournament for another big win. Eight teams will fight for the chance to make a national impact, but who will win the opportunity to do so?

The America East Conference is not the biggest and baddest college basketball conference in the NCAA, but they still have a lot of talent with a lot of heart that has the potential to beat any team in the nation, case in point, UMBC becoming the first ever 16-seed to beat a 1-seed Virginia 74-54.

In a conference without much parity throughout, this eight-team tournament is practically a four-team one, but any one of those four teams have a good shot to punch their ticket into the NCAA Tournament for an opportunity to shock the world, but the four teams on the bottom would like to ruin those teams dreams and defy the odds just to get a 16-seed, even though it is unlikely, anything can happen in the American East Tournament.

For the third straight year, and fifth time this decade, the Vermont Catacombs have won the American East regular-season championship. They did this by amassing an impressive 24-6 (14-2) record this season where even their star-player Anthony Lamb (more on him later) missed a few games.

Behind them are other teams that have had good seasons as well. The Stony Brook Seawolves 24-7(12-4), UMBC Retrievers 19-12 (11-5), and Hartford Hawks 17-14 (10-6) are the teams that round out the top four seeds in the tournament. I can see any four of these teams winning this tournament and maybe even a game depending on which of these teams.

That brings us to the bottom four seeds, the UMass Lowell River Hawks  15-16 (7-9), Albany Great Danes 12-19 (7-9), Binghampton Bearcats 9-22( 5-11), and finally the Maine Black Bears 5-26 (3-13) who actually won a tiebreaker of having a better conference road record(2-6) to get into this tournament. The team that failed to get in was the New Hampshire  Wildcats 5-24(3-13) who will not get linked due to failing to make an 8-team tournament in a 9-team conference which includes a Maine team who not only lost their first eight games but their last eight as well.

Anyway, expect to see a conference tournament that will have 50-50 matchups past the first round. After coming off with a big upset last year, this is a tournament all college basketball fans should watch or at least keep in mind to get a leg up when it comes to doing their brackets in March. Remember any team could technically win this, it is called March Madness after all.