{"id":1568,"date":"2017-03-01T09:57:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1568"},"modified":"2017-03-01T09:57:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:57:30","slug":"2017-patriot-league-tournament-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2017-patriot-league-tournament-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 Patriot League tournament forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Patriot League<\/strong>\u00a0(conference rank: 23rd)<br \/>\nFeb. 28, Mar. 2, 5, 8<br \/>\nAll games at higher seeds.<br \/>\n<strong>kPOY:<\/strong>\u00a0Tim Kempton, Lehigh<br \/>\n<strong>Regular season champ:<\/strong>\u00a0Bucknell (preseason #189 \/ 3rd PL, current #78)<br \/>\n<strong>Overachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0Bucknell<br \/>\n<strong>Underachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0Lafayette (preseason #301, current #330)<\/p>\n<p>My apologies to the Patriot League for this belated preview. (A couple of sources on reputable web sites had this tournament starting tomorrow.) Let&#8217;s pretend like it&#8217;s yesterday. Bucknell is the clear favorite having gone 15-3 and winning the league by three games. The Bison have the league&#8217;s best win with a November victory at #44 Vanderbilt. They easily led the conference in both offensive and defensive efficiency, the child of Bucknell&#8217;s excellent play and the parity in the middle of the league.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Lehigh is a bonafide challenger, though. Tim Kempton, Jr. is as experienced as you&#8217;ll see having been the focal point of the Mountain Hawks offense for the last four seasons. He has collected 29 game MVP&#8217;s over his career including 12 this season alone and he&#8217;s probably not finished. You can&#8217;t spell Kempton without kenpom so there&#8217;s that, too. Lehigh swept Bucknell this season so a rematch in the finals should be interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Spoiler alert! Army and Loyola defended\u00a0their home courts in first round games last night. That already makes this year&#8217;s tournament more conventional that last season&#8217;s when the road team went 5-4. Of course, four of those road wins were by Holy Cross in one of the more amazing conference tournament runs that has ever occurred. Last night&#8217;s results assure that no team will repeat that this season.<\/p>\n<pre><b>                      Qtrs Semis Final Champ<\/b>\r\n 1 Bucknell            100  92.3  79.7  62.7\r\n 3 Lehigh              100  88.5  53.0  20.3\r\n 2 Boston University   100  77.8  39.9  10.5\r\n 4 Navy                100  63.9  11.4   3.2\r\n 5 Holy Cross          100  36.1   6.6   1.9\r\n 7 Loyola MD          83.7  20.9   3.8   0.5\r\n 8 Army               76.6   6.5   2.0   0.4\r\n 6 Colgate             100  11.5   3.3   0.4\r\n 9 American           23.4   1.2   0.2   0.04\r\n10 Lafayette          16.3   1.3   0.07  &lt;.001<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patriot League\u00a0(conference rank: 23rd) Feb. 28, Mar. 2, 5, 8 All games at higher seeds. kPOY:\u00a0Tim Kempton, Lehigh Regular season champ:\u00a0Bucknell (preseason #189 \/ 3rd PL, current #78) Overachiever:\u00a0Bucknell Underachiever:\u00a0Lafayette (preseason #301, current #330) My apologies to the Patriot League for this belated preview. (A couple of sources on reputable web sites had this tournament [&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\/1568"}],"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=1568"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}