I’m using my ratings and Bill James’ log5 formula to estimate the chances of each participating team advancing to a particular round of its conference tournament.

Northeast Conference
Location: All games at higher seed
Dates: March 5, 8, 11
Chance of bid thief: zero
Current kPOY: Karvel Anderson, Robert Morris

Projections:

                Semis  Final  Champ
1 Robert Morris  85.5   67.3   48.7
2 Wagner         87.7   62.3   27.2
3 Bryant         88.3   36.5   14.7
4 Mt. St. Mary's 61.8   17.0    4.9
5 St. Francis NY 38.2   11.6    3.7
8 F. Dickinson   14.5    2.4    0.4
7 Central Conn   12.3    1.5    0.2
6 St. Francis PA 11.7    1.3    0.1 

No conference is more serious about rewarding the regular season than the NEC. The conference puts all tournament games on the home floor of the higher seed, while adding the extra twist of reseeding the semi-finals if there happens to be a first-round upset. So the bottom half of the bracket has to overcome some serious obstacles to win this thing.

The NEC has an 11-year run of being seeded 15th or 16th in the NCAA tournament and barring major chaos across the country, this season’s champ will be on the 16-line a week from Sunday. That got me to thinking about the 16-over-1 scenarios for this season. What if Wichita State was the first one-seed to lose to a 16? That could be one of the most awkward moments in tournament history. Well, the winner of this tournament could be the team that’s put in a position to do that.

Wednesday will likely be the last game for Fairleigh Dickinson’s Sidney Sanders, Jr. He is not going to be famous, but he was one of the most improved players in the country this season, if not the most improved. He went from an offensive rating of 86 on a usage of 17% as a junior to 109/34 as a senior. He was the main reason why the Knights surprisingly beat Rutgers and Seton Hall in consecutive games early in the season, then beat out two other teams for the NEC’s eight-seed and the right to play an extra game this week.