I must say that this week hasn’t been too exciting in the log5 department. With smaller conferences making a better effort to engineer their brackets to give their best teams the best chance at the automatic bid, there haven’t been any bonafide sleepers in most conferences. The CAA gives us a breath of fresh air by playing the tournament at a neutral site and providing us with a four-way tie atop the conference standings.

William & Mary won the tiebreaker to get the top seed and because of the neutral site, there’s no much of a reward for doing so. (W&M does get the auto-NIT bid, so there’s that.) In fact, there’s a punishment, because the fifth-seed is a very strong Hofstra team, who’s rated as the second-best team in the CAA behind the Tribe. Hofstra will be favored to beat fourth-seeded James Madison in the quarterfinals which would set up a Tribe/Pride showdown in the semis. That potential power struggle gives Northeastern the slight edge in the log5 table, although this is one of the most wide-open tournaments this season.

Keep in mind that William & Mary has gone its entire 322-year history without an NCAA tournament appearance. That’s the longest streak of any university in the country. In the title game last season, the Tribe blew a six-point lead with a little more than a minute to go, causing both King William III and Queen Mary III to roll over in their respective graves yet again. The original charter of the college states the purpose of the school was that “the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners”. Pretty sure those letters were not meant to be N-I-T.

Colonial Athletic Association

All-kenpom.com: Damion Lee, Drexel (kPOY); Juan’ya Green, Hofstra; Scott Eatherton, Northeastern; Terry Tarpey, William & Mary; Marcus Thornton, William & Mary.

March 6-9 at Baltimore.

                  Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 3 Northeastern    100  74.6  48.9  26.5
 1 William & Mary  100  72.0  39.7  23.1
 5 Hofstra         100  64.5  36.3  21.2
 2 UNC Wilmington  100  65.5  30.1  13.1
 4 James Madison   100  35.5  15.0   6.6
 6 Delaware        100  25.4  10.1   3.0
 9 Towson         57.0  17.2   6.0   2.3
 7 Drexel         55.9  20.6   6.9   2.2
10 Charleston     44.1  13.9   4.0   1.1
 8 Elon           43.0  10.5   3.0   1.0