Surprising as it may be, the 7-25 Cougars need just 1 more win to earn what would be one of the most unexpected NCAA tournament bids in history, IMO.

Here’s how it happened. The Cougars won their last 2 regular season games to pull themselves into a 6 seed in the NEC Tournament.

They then won their 3rd game in a row with an upset of 3 seed Central Connecticut in the first round.

On the other side of the bracket, Le Moyne pulled an upset and will face the other semifinalist, Stonehill. Neither of those schools are full D1 members yet. If Chicago can make the finals, they will get the autobid regardless of the result.

The main problem for the Cougars is they are facing Fairleigh Dickinson. The Knights are 27-3 and went undefeated in the NEC regular season.

Sounds hopeless. But despite their shining record, the Knights didn’t exactly impress in their previous games versus Chicago State. The won by 4 at home, and by 6 in Chicago. If those game are any indication, and I believe they are, the Cougars have a legit shot.

No, they don’t have a lot of wins, but with a first year head coach and an almost entirely new squad, they are finally hitting their stride and are playing their best ball of the season right now.

Wouldn’t that be something?

If they don’t pull it off, the season’s 7 wins is still the most since 2010-11 when they went 24-11 and went to the WBI Semifinals. And it’s a lot more than the 1 win last year, which was not versus a D1 opponent.

If I am missing something, somebody please correct me. I know this seems sort of odd. The thing is, the Chicago State write up of the win doesn’t mention the NCAA possibility. However, at the end of the CSU game, the winners of other games were not all known.

Wouldn't that be something!

FDU really came out firing on all cylinders and were never contested.

After a 4 and a 6 point win in their previous 2 games versus CSU, FDU got the 31 point win. Very impressive. Must be why they are 28-3…

NEC champ FDU lost in the first round to TCU. They put up a decent enough showing. They lost by 22, but did lead after one quarter, so they were not totally outclassed, but just faced a very good team.

After all, TCU was the Big 12 Champion.

It was disappointing for a 27 win team to be a 15 seed, but they hadn’t really beaten anyone who was good, haven’t been in the tournament for roughly 30 years, and play in one of the worst conferences, so I get it.

They could have competed very well against a lot of teams in the tournament though. When you look at some of the first round blowouts, it really does show FDU is a decent team. Depending on how well TCU does going forward, we may look back and the loss may look even more “impressive” lol.

Stonehill made the WNIT and lost bad to UMass.

That concludes the NEC BB season on both sides.