I enjoyed reading this piece about Iona coach Tim Cluess. Cluess vents about the continued decreased in scoring in college hoops and mainly pins the blame on controlling coaches. The root cause of the problem is probably more complicated than that, but I compliment Cluess on his candor. Of course, it’s easy to bash your profession coming off a season where you went 24-7 and 17-3 in league play. But it is perplexing that more coaches don’t exploit what seems to be a market inefficiency in terms of playing uptempo basketball where shooters have a green light to shoot.

It’s the kind of negative recruiting I could get behind. “Hey, coach so-and-so is going to make you pass the ball five times before you can shoot. You don’t want to play for him.” Cluess isn’t the only coach to have succeeded by preaching an offense-heavy uptempo attack, but it’s a short list.

The MAAC tourney is not Iona’s to dominate, however. With all games at the home of the eight-seed, the field is the most wide-open I’ve previewed so far. Six teams have at least an eight percent chance of a title and it would not be the craziest event of championship fortnight if either seventh-seeded Saint Peter’s or eighth-seeded Siena would snag the tourney bid.

MAAC

All-kenpom.com: David Laury, Iona (kPOY); A.J. English, Iona; Emmy Andujar, Manhattan; Ousmane Drame, Manhattan; Zaid Hearst, Quinnipiac.

March 5, 7, 8, 9. All games at Siena.

               Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 1 Iona         100  76.7  52.2  34.4
 2 Rider        100  66.8  37.2  17.8
 3 Manhattan    100  55.8  28.3  12.3
 5 Canisius     100  51.2  19.9   9.6
 6 Quinnipiac  79.6  40.0  20.4   8.9
 4 Monmouth     100  48.8  18.4   8.7
 7 St. Peter's 65.3  24.7  10.7   3.9
 8 Siena       65.2  17.6   7.8   3.2
10 Fairfield   34.7   8.5   2.5   0.6
 9 Niagara     34.8   5.7   1.7   0.5
11 Marist      20.4   4.2   0.9   0.2