{"id":1528,"date":"2017-02-27T16:15:51","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T22:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2017-02-27T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T22:17:00","slug":"2017-america-east-tournament-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2017-america-east-tournament-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 America East tournament forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>America East<\/strong>\u00a0(conference rank: 24th)<br \/>\nMar. 1, 6, 11<br \/>\nAll games at higher seed<br \/>\n<strong>kPOY:<\/strong>\u00a0Anthony Lamb, Vermont.<br \/>\n<strong>Regular season champ:<\/strong>\u00a0Vermont (preseason #105 \/ 1st\u00a0America East, current #69)<br \/>\n<strong>Overachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0UMBC (preseason #311, current #188)<br \/>\n<strong>Underachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0Binghamton (preseason #261, current #313)<\/p>\n<p>Vermont hasn&#8217;t lost since an 81-69 defeat at Butler on December 21 and its 18-game win streak is the longest in the country. They ripped through America East, winning games by an average of 14.2 points, the fifth-best conference scoring margin in the land this season. So it doesn&#8217;t take a computer to figure out that the Catamounts should be\u00a0a heavy favorite here. But the computers will also tell you that should the Catamounts win, they shouldn&#8217;t be satisfied with just appearing in the NCAA tournament.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Vermont has one of the best freshmen I&#8217;ve never heard of in Anthony Lamb. He barely plays 20 minutes a game, but he packs a lot of fun into his limited minutes as a 6-6 power forward. And Trae Bell-Haynes has a claim for\u00a0the honor\u00a0of America East&#8217;s best point guard.<\/p>\n<p>How weird was Stony Brook&#8217;s season? They finished in sole possession of second place at 12-4 but are rated as the fifth-strongest team. Even with a seed-friendly format, the Seawolves are the clear third choice behind UVM and Albany whose young lineup may make a run at a top 100 season\u00a0next year. The Danes open with Hartford in a matchup that produced the biggest first-round upset in any conference tournament last season.<\/p>\n<p>New Hampshire is in its 56th season of Division I basketball and has never made the NCAA tournament. They haven&#8217;t even made a conference title game the 34 previous appearances. This might be the best team the Wildcats have fielded and they have just a 1-in-20 chance of an NCAA tournament bid. Such is life in Durham.<\/p>\n<p>America East re-seeds after the quarterfinals lest Hartford, Binghamton, or Maine gets any funny ideas about winning this thing.<\/p>\n<pre><strong>                 Semis Final Champ<\/strong>\r\n 1 Vermont        98.3  85.4  71.4\r\n 3 Albany         93.5  49.2  13.5\r\n 2 Stony Brook    82.8  43.1   8.5\r\n 4 New Hampshire  69.0  15.6   5.0\r\n 5 UMBC           31.0   5.6   1.5\r\n 7 Binghamton     17.2   0.7   0.08\r\n 6 Hartford        6.5   0.2   0.02\r\n 8 Maine           1.7   0.2   0.01\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America East\u00a0(conference rank: 24th) Mar. 1, 6, 11 All games at higher seed kPOY:\u00a0Anthony Lamb, Vermont. Regular season champ:\u00a0Vermont (preseason #105 \/ 1st\u00a0America East, current #69) Overachiever:\u00a0UMBC (preseason #311, current #188) Underachiever:\u00a0Binghamton (preseason #261, current #313) Vermont hasn&#8217;t lost since an 81-69 defeat at Butler on December 21 and its 18-game win streak is the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}