Women’s Tourney Picture Still Not Clear

Only a week remains in the America East women’s basketball season, and the conference can now be divided into two groups — the University of Vermont and everybody else.

The Catamounts (18-7, 12-2 America East) continued their roll toward the postseason with a 65-57 win at the site of next week’s conference tournament, beating the University of Hartford on Sunday. Already assured of the No. 1 seed in the tournament and their fifth America East regular-season championship since 1992, the Catamounts are by far the deepest, most balanced and most fundamentally sound team in the conference. They will head down to Hartford’s Chase Family Arena next week as the prohibitive favorite to win the conference’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid, and it will be a shock to many if they fail to do so.

And the other nine teams? Well, let’s just say that they are treating the remaining seeds like a hot potato.

The State University of New York at Binghamton, probably the biggest surprise in the America East this year (the Bearcats are in only their second Division I season and were picked to finish seventh), went into Saturday’s home game against the University of New Hampshire needing to win to assure itself of a top-three seed in the tournament. The final score: New Hampshire 62, Binghamton 49, the Bearcats’ fourth loss in their last five games.

In its previous game, New Hampshire was also in position to make a late run at a top-three seed when it hosted the University of Maine last Tuesday. Maine 68, New Hampshire 65.

Thanks to those two results, Boston University (16-10, 9-6 America East) went up to Maine’s Alfond Arena on Sunday in control of its own destiny for the No. 2 seed, which would mean avoiding Vermont until the championship game. Final score from Orono: Maine 67, BU 64.

There is still another week for this Bowl Championship Series-like logjam to settle itself out. And now it is Maine that will hold all the cards when it hosts Hartford in its season finale at 1 p.m. Saturday. Then again, with the way things went last week, who knows what is going to happen?

Ever since the Terriers began conference play right after the New Year, they have struggled to get to the free throw line the same way they did earlier in the season.

That changed on Sunday, when the Terriers made it to the charity stripe 34 times against Maine.

There was just one problem: The Terriers hit only 19 of those attempts, including several crucial misses in the final minutes, when the Black Bears rallied from a 10-point deficit for a stunning victory.

After the game, BU head coach Margaret McKeon said her team would learn from Sunday’s heartbreaking defeat. They better learn fast, because starting next week, a loss means no more basketball until next October.

As with the America East, most of Division I’s 31 conferences (except the Ivy League) will play their championship tournaments in the next two weeks.

For the major conferences, such as the Big East, Big 10 or ACC, conference tournaments are mostly a time for the top teams (which are guaranteed at-large berths regardless of how well they do) to pad their NCAA Tournament profiles in hopes of getting as high a seed as possible. Other than that, coaches probably just want to avoid a serious injury to a star player that can derail a potential championship run.

But for the America East and most of the country’s other mid-major conferences, winning the conference tournament is often a pre-requisite for earning an NCAA Tournament berth. Even though Vermont has dominated the America East for most of the season, the Catamounts still must win three games in three days next week at Chase Family Arena in order to see their NCAA Tournament dreams come true.

The latter scenario, which generates the greatest controversy on the issue of conference tournaments, is also what can make them so exciting. Everything is on the line as two teams who know each other very well battle it out for a spot in the Field of 64.