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America East Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2020-21 season

By Cody Mitchell

CATONSVILLE, MD - FEBRUARY 21: The American East Conference logo on the floor before a college basketball game between the Vermont Catamounts and the UMBC Retrievers at the Event Center on February 21, 2019 in Catsonville, Maryland. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
CATONSVILLE, MD - FEBRUARY 21: The American East Conference logo on the floor before a college basketball game between the Vermont Catamounts and the UMBC Retrievers at the Event Center on February 21, 2019 in Catsonville, Maryland. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images) /
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America East Basketball
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 16: Anthony Lamb #3 of the Vermont Catamounts (Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images) /

The America East Basketball tournament made it all the way to the championship game before it was ultimately canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. With this being the most wild off-season with so many moving parts, who looks to have a leg up heading into 2020-2021?

The stage was set for Vermont and Hartford to face off Saturday, March 14th in the America East Basketball tournament championship. Vermont headed into the game nearly double-digit favorites coming off an impressive 14-2 conference record. As we all know the championship game was eventually canceled due to COVID-19, leaving us wondering if Hartford could’ve pulled off the ultimate upset.

Over the last few years, the America East has been very heavy at the top with some disappointing stragglers at the back-end. Seeing more and more teams finish under .500 or even struggle to reach double-digit wins. While at the top it’s been utter dominance. Vermont has been the king of the conference winning the last four regular-season titles with a preeminent 59-5 record in conference play. This coming right after Albany’s run of three straight NCAA tournament bids.

The conference will see some talent graduating this off-season but a ton of talent is coming back as well. Teams like Stony Brook and New Hampshire and basically bringing back their entire rosters. But teams like Vermont are losing some major talent including back to back player of the year Anthony Lamb. While other teams are losing their top guys looking for their role player to take on a bigger role come next season.

The 2020 college basketball off-season has been by far the wildest we’ve ever seen. With over 700 players entering the transfer portal and players declaring for the NBA left and right, there are still a lot of moving parts ahead of all these teams. We still have no clue if the season will start on time or not, we could see a scenario where we jump straight into conference play in January. If this were the case teams will have no time to work out any hiccups, leaving the door open for some serious craziness come 2020-2021.

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