You know all about the Power 5 conferences in college basketball. You hear about those more than any other, and those groups often dominate the March Madness conversation. There are 26 other conferences out there, however, and our goal is to get you up to speed on the teams, players and fights in the standings to know before the conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the official start of March Madness.
It’s time for you to get to know a mid-major: this time, it’s the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
The MAAC is not particularly spread out as far as conferences go, with 13 member schools located across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut at its center, as well as one school each in Massachusetts and Maryland. The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference formed just before women’s basketball became a Division I sport that had NCAA representation, and added basketball for both men’s and women’s ball at the earliest opportunity, the 1981-1982 season.
Four of the original six charter members remain — Fairfield, Iona, Saint Peter’s and Manhattan — and two new schools were introduced for the 2024-2025 season, in Sacred Heart University and Merrimack, with plenty of others leaving and joining in between. Its teams are fighting to get into a conference tournament where just the top 10 programs make it, leaving three out in the northeastern cold. In addition, the first six teams in the standings receive a bye to the quarterfinals, leaving the other four to play their way into the round, with the top seed facing the winner of 8 vs. 9 and the second seed getting whichever comes out of 7 vs. 10.
Those little edges in competition matter, as the conference tournament is likely to be the only way for a MAAC team to get to March Madness. That’s how things have worked out the last three years, and while there are some solid basketball teams in the conference — one of them has even received votes in the poll – the lack of depth makes the overall quality and depth of the MAAC a problem when it comes to handing out at-large bids.
Leaders:
- Points Per Game: Kevair Kennedy, Merrimack, 18.3
- Rebounds Per Game: Brandon Benjamin, Fairfield, 10.3 (10th in D-I)
- Assists Per Game: Mekhi Conner, Sacred Heart, 6.2
- Steals Per Game: Jaden Winston, Manhattan, 2.5 (9th in D-I)
- Blocks Per Game: KC Ugwuakazi, Merrimack, 2.1
We do not have to guess at which team will be the top seed in the MAAC men’s tournament in March, as Merrimack secured outright possession of the regular-season title with a double-overtime win against Iona that moved the Warriors to 16-2 on the season. This is Merrimack’s first time as the top seed in the MAAC, as previously it was a member of the NEC, and only made the switch to Division I in 2019-2020. Unlike in 2022-2023, when Merrimack won the NEC conference championship, the Warriors will be eligible for March Madness should they win the MAAC conference tournament, as their transition period from Division II is over.
That is far from automatic, despite having the conference’s leading scorer in freshman guard Kevair Kennedy. Siena and Saint Peter’s are 12-6, with Marist half-a-game back of that pair. Quinnipiac is 11-7 and Fairfield and Mount St. Mary’s both 10-8. Iona and Manhattan are 8-10, while Sacred Heart is 8-11 — the remaining teams, Niagara, Canisius and Rider, won’t have enough wins to qualify for the MAAC tournament even if they were to all win out, as each has just two games left and are at minimum 3.5 back of Sacred Heart.
MAAC leading scorer and freshman Kevair Kennedy has provided Merrimack with a serious boost. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
Marist is first in the conference in the NCAA Evaluation Tool despite sitting in fourth in the standings, at 169th. Merrimack is next up at 180, with Sienna at 188 to wrap up the top-200 MAAC teams. Merrimack has the only positive Net Rating per KenPom in the conference, at 0.10. It’s tops in the MAAC in Wins Above Bubble, as well, but at -5.37 — to reiterate, no in the MAAC is making it to March Madness without that automatic bid.
So, not a ton of depth here — the MAAC is ranked 25th out of 31 conferences in overall NET rating — but there have been Quad 3 possibilities for everyone, and the entire conference save Marist scheduled Quad 1 non-conference matchups earlier in the season. That bit of extra effort might be enough to avoid a play-in game in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament: on Feb. 20, FOX Sports’ Mike Decourcy projected Merrimack to face top-seed Duke as a 16-seed in the East Region bracket after weeks of matching the Warriors up against SWAC’s Bethune-Cookman in a play-in, first. It’s early yet on that note, though, especially with conference tourney upsets a distinct possibility all over the map.
Leaders:
- Points Per Game: Kaety L’Amoreaux, Fairfield, 18.6
- Rebounds Per Game: Madison Roman, Merrimack, 10.6
- Assists Per Game: Kaety L’Amoreaux, Fairfield, 4.5
- Steals Per Game: Paloma Garcia, Merrimack, 2.4
- Blocks Per Game: Oralye Keifer, Merrimack, 2.4 (9th in D-I)
While picking a favorite in the men’s MAAC is a little tough given the depth that is there, the women’s is, in some ways, a much shorter conversation. Fairfield is 18-1 in conference play, 24-4 overall and 49th in NET powered by a 2-2 record in Quad 1 matchups. The Stags are 47th in Wins Above Bubble. They picked up 18 votes in the Feb. 23 Associated Press top 25 poll, making them the de facto No. 27 team in the country. Fairfield leads the entire nation in 3-pointers and is seventh in the country in 3-point percentage, at 37.7%. The Stags have the 46th-best Offensive Rating (105.71 points per 100 possessions) in the entire league and the 63rd-best adjusted Net Rating — yes, even after adjusting for strength of schedule, Fairfield still has a tournament-caliber distance between its points scored and allowed.
No one else is close, though, Quinnipiac — second in the MAAC at 17-1, is 77th in NET but 91st in WAB. Here is where things get a little tricky, however: the lone conference loss for both teams came against each other. Quinnipiac briefly solved for Fairfield’s 3-point reliance by playing a physical defense against the Stags that kept its star junior shooters Katy L’Amoreaux and Meghan Anderson from thriving like usual, and the result was a surprise 72-58 W. In the rematch, though, L’Amoreaux — the top player in the conference by Player Efficiency Rating — was ready for the approach and shot 10-for-17 overall and 4-for-8 from 3 for 30 points, powering the Stags to a 75-63 win. Anderson, by the way, ranks third in PER, and Fairfield sophomore Cyanne Coe is fifth. Quinnipiac has the other two of the top five, in junior center Anna Foley senior forward Ella O’Donnell.
Kaety L’Amoreaux is a double threat for Fairfield, as the conference’s leading scorer and one of its top defenders. (Photo by Dan Squicciarini/NurPhoto via Getty Images).
There are other teams in the conference, of course. Merrimack is 13-5, Iona is 11-8, Sacred Heart 10-8. Siena and Manhattan are both 9-9, rounding out the sure things in the MAAC tournament. Two of Marist (7-11), Saint Peter’s (6-12) and Rider (5-13) will likely round out the tournament pool, with Canisius (3-15) and Niagara (1-17) seemingly well in the back at this late stage. The problem is that Merrimack, as good as it is against these teams, is also next-up in the conference in NET at 222, and it’s 187th in WAB. A win against Fairfield or Quinnipiac isn’t impossible, but it would take a perfect storm of positive developments for the Warriors and negative ones for its opponent — and Merrimack is the next-best shot in the MAAC to make it to March Madness, as every other team is well within the bottom-100 in the league by NET.
That’s the beauty of these conference tournaments, however: Merrimack or Iona or or Sacred Heart might have one of those days where everything goes right. Where Madison Roman goes 20-20 for Merrimack, or Isabellah Middleton leads Iona in scoring and shuts down the shooter she’s assigned to, or Amelia Wood has one of those games where she’s everywhere, hitting 3s and grabbing rebounds and stealing the ball and rejecting opponents, powering Sacred Heart to an upset. It’s all possible! But in the realm of likelihood, well. Fairfield or Quinnipiac are right there.
