UVM Hoop Cat

If the MAAC is capable of adding any school outside of a school from the NEC, I'll give someone one US Dollar.

Seriously, unless a school like a LaSalle downgrades...(St. Bonaventure? maybe) then I don't know who they would "attract" outside of the NEC

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"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

mainejeff

Yeah......and in a vacuum.......BC, UConn, UMass and URI would be great gets for America East.

BingGrad

NJIT. I'll send you a pm with my address for the dollar. Don't get cute and send me 100 pennies either...

UAalum72

He says it wouldn't happen because Siena would block it, not because Albany doesn't (I hope) have the slightest inkling of moving there.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. " - B. Franklin

UVM Hoop Cat

LoL, when I wrote that I was thinking I should put *except NJIT/ Indy's. Guess I should have.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

BingGrad

Heck, Iona, Manhattan and St. Peters should be the ones blocking it. Each of those schools probably has more Albany alumni and students living within a 20 mile radius of their campus than they have of their own. Whenever the Great Danes were good, they'd be playing road games in their own gym.

Beagle

MAAC is all private schools, I doubt you would ever see a state school added. I think the MAAC is in a difficult position because they don't have Football, field hockey, wrestling etc, IMO the Patriot is stronger then the MAAC now.

BU_Hoops

Hartford could be someone else not from the NEC that could consider it. I'll take the one dollar bill............

TerrierNation

If you ask me, I'd say the quality of the Patriot League was already better than the MAAC from an overall standpoint, albeit not from a purely basketball perspective.

Urban Barrister

This may be thinking a little too outside the box, but does anyone else see similarities between the AE and Patriot and the MAAC and NEC? What if each league paired up and worked out a partnership of sorts that included scheduling, travel (Loyola-UMBC), TV, and maybe even some sort of inter league "cup" or trophy, where the top two teams played each other after all other playoffs had finished? Heck, you could go further create a four league alliance and create an entirely separate playoff or tournament. You wouldn't want to combine the leagues and lose the extra auto-bid, but it would seem to make a ton of sense in other respects.

Just a thought . . . .

BingGrad

In this era of constantly cutting away at athletic programs, I've always thought some kind of alliance between local conferences would be helpful for maintaining auto-bids in certain sports -- and would make for tougher competition in some sports where auto-bids aren't an issue.

There is something like it in Track/Cross Country with the IC4A which is a championship between the conference championships and the NCAA's for member schools from Virginia through Maine -- so it isn't entirely impossible.

UVM Hoop Cat

You only get the $1 if they add someone. I doubt the MAAC would ask Hartford and I also doubt Hartford would want to join.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

NU Hoop Fan

There's already an unofficial scheduling situation going on. Look at the non-con schedules of these 3-4 conferences....why make it formal?

And the "formal" scheduling situation would look a little like the ECAC in the 1980s. The ECAC North (the now AE), the ECAC Metro (MAAC)....

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