{"id":1619,"date":"2017-03-03T14:22:01","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T20:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2017-03-03T14:22:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T20:22:14","slug":"2017-meac-tournament-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/2017-meac-tournament-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 MEAC tournament forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Mid-Eastern Athletic\u00a0Conference<\/strong>\u00a0(conference rank: 31st)<br \/>\nMarch 6-11<br \/>\nAll games at\u00a0Norfolk, Va.<br \/>\n<strong>kPOY:<\/strong>\u00a0Patrick Cole, N.C. Central.<br \/>\n<strong>Regular season champ:<\/strong>\u00a0N.C. Central (preseason #288 \/ 3rd MEAC, current #159)<br \/>\n<strong>Overachiever: <\/strong>N.C. Central<br \/>\n<strong>Underachiever:<\/strong>\u00a0Howard (preseason #275, current #335)<\/p>\n<p>The MEAC&#8217;s regular season concluded last night with North Carolina A&amp;T upsetting conference-leader N.C. Central 68-63. It was A&amp;T&#8217;s first win over a D-I team since they beat N.C. Central in last year&#8217;s regular-season finale, a span of 29 games. The win meant that there are no winless teams in conference play this season.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The path to #nowinlessteams was pretty incredible. Two Sundays ago, Oregon State had to overcome a nine-point deficit with 3:23 left to beat Utah in what appeared to be the Beavers last winnable game. Then SIU-Edwardsville knocked off Eastern Illinois in its season-finale last Saturday. And finally, last night North Carolina A&amp;T had to overcome a second-half deficit to beat the conference champ. (Central&#8217;s leading score and kPOY recipient, Patrick Cole, played all 40 minutes, so it&#8217;s not like the Eagles weren&#8217;t trying.)<\/p>\n<p>N.C. Central is still the obvious favorite here despite losing its last two regular-season games. After a down year last season, LeVelle Moton&#8217;s team is back to owning the MEAC, ranking 120 spots better than the next-closest team.<\/p>\n<p>One MEAC team will not be participating this week and that&#8217;s Savannah State, who is ineligible for the postseason owing to APR penalties. But let&#8217;s not forget what the Tigers accomplished this season. They blew away all known records for three-point attempt rate, taking 57.4% of their shots from beyond the arc. They also led the country in adjusted tempo. Gimmicky, maybe, but it was also successful. SSU finished 10-6 in MEAC play, and were one of three teams to beat N.C. Central. Here&#8217;s hoping this isn&#8217;t a one-year experiment by Horace Broadnax.<\/p>\n<p>The MEAC tournament runs for an incredible six nights in a row. You have to make a major commitment to attend all the games in Norfolk. The following odds give Norfolk State a half-share of home-court advantage and Hampton a quarter-share.<\/p>\n<pre><b>                           Qtrs Semis Final Champ<\/b>\r\n 1 North Carolina Central   100  87.0  67.1  51.3\r\n 2 Norfolk St.              100  76.5  52.3  21.1\r\n 4 Hampton                  100  61.5  19.1  10.2\r\n 3 Morgan St.               100  63.7  27.2   7.7\r\n 5 Maryland Eastern Shore  78.6  34.7   9.0   4.3\r\n11 Howard                  54.1  20.7   6.5   1.3\r\n 7 South Carolina St.      57.1  14.8   6.4   1.3\r\n 8 Delaware St.            51.0   7.1   2.5   0.9\r\n 6 Coppin St.              45.9  15.6   4.4   0.8\r\n 9 Bethune Cookman         49.0   5.9   2.0   0.7\r\n10 Florida A&amp;M             42.9   8.7   3.2   0.5\r\n12 North Carolina A&amp;T      21.4   3.8   0.4  0.07<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mid-Eastern Athletic\u00a0Conference\u00a0(conference rank: 31st) March 6-11 All games at\u00a0Norfolk, Va. kPOY:\u00a0Patrick Cole, N.C. Central. Regular season champ:\u00a0N.C. Central (preseason #288 \/ 3rd MEAC, current #159) Overachiever: N.C. Central Underachiever:\u00a0Howard (preseason #275, current #335) The MEAC&#8217;s regular season concluded last night with North Carolina A&amp;T upsetting conference-leader N.C. Central 68-63. It was A&amp;T&#8217;s first win over [&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\/1619"}],"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=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}