Thursday, February 27, 2025

Chicago State @ Mercyhurst Mercy win 90-68
Stonehill @ FDU FDU wins 82-69
Le Moyne @ Central Connecticut CCSU wins 84-75
Wagner @ LIU LIU wins 60-47


Saturday, March 1, 2025

Chicago State @ Saint Francis U
LIU @ FDU
Le Moyne @ Stonehill
Central Connecticut @ Wagner

Chicago has one last chance to pick up a win Saturday at St Francis. From the way the Cougars have played the last few games, I’m not really optimistic. Maybe though.

Nonetheless, a Cougar win on Saturday and a Le Moyne loss would put the Cougars in 7th for the tournament and mean they likely play LIU instead of CCSU. Regardless of the conference standings, the difference in NET is about 140 spots. With that said, the Cougars showed out in their last game versus Central Connecticut and were able to build a big lead.

All teams are vulnerable in the conference tournament, but I’d still take the lower rated team if given a choice. It’s the 2025 NEC, so it’s a 1 in 6 chance for any team to get an ncaa tournament bid, as wild as that sounds.

Ok, crazy talk here- Chicago played well enough versus the conference leader to build a big lead. The announcers said that is common for CCSU, to get down, and then blow by opponents in the second half. So what if that comeback never comes and things just don’t go their way? Beating them is certainly possible.

Outside of Central Connecticut, all of the teams are around 300 NET or below, and honestly not good.

Here’s to the Cougars being the first NET 350+ team with single digit wins to make the NCAA lol.

February 27 Standings

Central Connecticut 13-2
LIU 11-4
Mercyhurst 9-7
FDU 8-7
Saint Francis U 7-8
Wagner 6-9
Stonehill 6-9
Le Moyne 4-11
Chicago State 4-11

Worth noting, Chicago has defeated the #2 and #3 teams already. They also played league leader CCSU to a 6 point game after leading big.

Point is, it’s a tight league without all that much separation. It will be an interesting tournament.

Mercyhurst has now completed their conference season. The league planners did an excellent job planning the conference regular season games. With 9 teams, that leaves one team out of day of league games.

Mercyhurst isn’t eligible for the conference tournament this first year, but their games do count for the standings of course. The schedule was devised where Mercyhurst is the idle team the final week of the season. This way, a team not in the running can’t affect the final standings.

I’m thinking of a situation where an MU team with no postseason to play for could possibly come in and play extraordinarily well as a final statement, and upset a highly ranked team in the final game, and drop that team down a slot in the rankings and have direct impact on the conference tournament.

Nice touch to simply place their idle week here and let them end their season a few days early and not have a situation like I mentioned.

I was unable to watch the Cougars today. I will watch later.

But, the Cougars took the Red Flash into OT on the road, before falling.

Final conference regular season game. On to the tourney.