Monmouth was upset by Siena in the semifinals of the MAAC tournament – this means that the Hawks are now 54-13 in the last two years (with 2 of their losses being in their conference tournament) and in the horrible position of hoping the selection committee will give them a chance.   The sad reality of it is that there are a few major conference teams who will likely get into the tournament with more losses this year than the Hawks have had in two.

While I hope that the committee gives Monmouth a chance over a 14 loss team, my suspicion is that if the Hawks didn’t get in last year with their amazing road victories, they won’t get in this year.  They lost on the road at South Carolina, Syracuse and North Carolina (and to be fair, many teams would lose those three road games) – but if you are a mid-major who wants to play in the tournament, you can’t get lucky enough like Syracuse to eventually have those teams come to your house – you have to win the road games when you get a chance.  Unfortunately, only the South Carolina game was close.   But before we criticize the Hawks for this, lets remember that Syracuse blew out Georgia Tech by 29 points this weekend, the same team they lost by 6 points a couple weeks ago when they had to play the Yellow Jackets in Atlanta.

Just to put into perspective how unfair this is, the three above teams are 46-7 at home, and 18-22 when they play on the road and neutral sites.   But Monmouth and other mid-majors don’t typically get the chance to get these games anywhere other than where these teams are nearly invincible.    I hope the committee looks at this, but I know that they won’t.  Most likely, the Hawks will be getting an auto-bid into the NIT.