A closer look at Monmouth’s fit in the CAA
A closer look at Monmouth’s fit in the CAA
Crunching the numbers shows the Colonial has been a stronger conference than the MAAC for the past decade-plus.
Last Wednesday’s press conference to formalize Monmouth leaving the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference for the Colonial Athletic Association was more like a celebration, a culmination of years of work to take an athletic program to new heights.
Monmouth, Stony Brook and Hampton will become full members of the CAA on July 1, making this the Hawks’ final season competing for a MAAC championship. Stony Brook was already a football member of the CAA and will bring over the rest of its sports from the America East; Hampton is leaving behind the Big South.
Mid-major realignment might not make an impression on the average college sports fan. Aren’t the FCS leagues all sort of the same? The answer to that is no. You have your top-of-the-line mid-majors like the Atlantic-10, you have the bottom of the totem pole like the current iteration of the Western Athletic Conference, and you have many more shades of gray in between.
Monmouth believes the CAA is an indisputable step up.
“As a coach you always want what’s best for your program,” men’s basketball coach King Rice said, “and us going into the CAA is what’s best for our program. We’ve been working extremely hard to try to move our program forward, move it up, lift it up, and with our school being accepted to this league, it is time now. We are here.”
I wondered if the numbers bore that out. It turns out, they do. At least for men’s basketball and football, the CAA has been one of the better mid-major leagues for quite a while now.
From a different project I was working on last year, I had saved some data from the NCAA that shows the end-of-year NET/RPI rankings by league from the 2010-11 to 2019-20 seasons. For example, the Big East’s teams owned the best average NET ranking after 2020, with the Big 12 second and the Big Ten third. But the Big 12 was top-two for seven years running, leading it to the best 10-year average placement and the unofficial title of “best conference in basketball.”
Looking back on this data, you can see the CAA is at the higher end of mid-major land at 14th out of the 32 current conferences, rubbing elbows with more well-known mid-majors like the Missouri Valley, MAC (one A) and Conference-USA. (I hoped to update this data to include the 2020-21 rankings, but it doesn’t appear the NCAA ever published those.)
The MAAC comes in at a decent 20th, with a rough 2018-19 finish bringing the average down. But the Colonial was consistently the stronger hoops league, with a better NET or RPI nine of those 10 years. (For context, the MAAC has performed better than Monmouth’s previous league, the low-major Northeast Conference. As Rice said, “Us being in the MAAC for the last nine years as prepared us for this day.”)
Monmouth’s growing strength in basketball no doubt was attractive to Colonial commissioner Joe D’Antonio and league executives. The Hawks’ record from the start of 2014-15 to today is 141-99, and Rice has three regular-season championships and two NIT appearances under his belt. They’ve finished inside the top 100 in RPI twice and outside the top 210 just once since 2014.
“It’s new for us and it’s going to be a heavy challenge, but we’re coming to this league to try to compete for championships,” Rice said. “We want to add something to the league, but we really want to compete for championships and we think our program’s in position to do that.”
How about March Madness? The CAA’s teams have been more likely to hang with tougher opponents and pull off first-round upsets. Based on data published on NCAA.com here before the 2019 tournament, and factoring in first-round losses in 2019 and 2021 for each league, the CAA’s all-time March Madness record is 21-39 – a nice, round 35 percent. The MAAC is at just 5-35 – 12.5 percent.
The Colonial is losing James Madison, which is upgrading its powerhouse football program to FBS and joining the Sun Belt. But the league is still home to programs like Hofstra, Delaware, UNC Wilmington, Drexel and Towson, and its seen other notable mid-major teams like VCU and George Mason graduate up in years past.
This creates an impressive amount of parity. In the past 11 years, nine different programs have won the conference championship and nine different programs claimed regular-season titles. Towson and UNC Wilmington finished ninth and 10th last season; Wilmington is 9-0 in conference play as of Wednesday and Towson is close behind in second.
As an aside, the story is very similar for football. Even without the Dukes, CAA football still includes the likes of Villanova, Maine and Richmond on top of some full members that play the sport. The league had a record six programs make the FCS playoffs in 2018.
“I’ve researched the last 10 years of schedules, OK? There’s no such thing as a home-field advantage,” football coach Kevin Callahan said. “What you see in this league is every 4-5 years, with the exception of JMU recently, is a team will have an exceptional year and spike. Then when you look at the other teams and their conference records, most of them are 4-4. Some are 3-5, some are 5-3. So what that tells you is they beat each other up because of the high level of competition and the parity.”
Factor in the two other schools entering alongside Monmouth. Hampton men’s basketball has made six NCAA Tournaments, its claim to fame being an upset win over Iowa State as a No. 15 seed over a No. 2 in 2001. Stony Brook was built up by none other than Rutgers’ Steve Pikiell and has enjoyed plenty of 20-win seasons, though success in March has been limited.
In this season’s nonconference slate, the Hawks beat Towson on the road and lost to Hofstra at home right before Christmas. I asked Rice about what he would need to change for Monmouth to be ready to dive into the Colonial full-time.
“Playing them one night and being able to get a win is different than going into a league and now every single night you’re playing that level of team and that level of coach,” he said. “That’s why it’s going to be hard. Us changing – I’m not gonna change a whole bunch. We’re gonna play the style we play. I’m super aggressive. We like to come after you. I’m gonna do that.
“We’ll probably need to get a little bit bigger, stronger kid. If we recruit high school, we’ll need a bigger, stronger young guy. But the way recruiting is now, you can find kids all over the country and you can put a team together quickly.”
For now, Monmouth fans can enjoy one last ride in the MAAC, one more showdown with Rick Pitino’s Iona team (perhaps two, should they meet in the tournament in Atlantic City) and one more shot at winning the conference title before the competition get tougher next season.
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Thanks for reading, as always. Let’s clean the glass with some quick notes on last night’s, er, fascinating games:
Paul Mulcahy and Cliff Omoruyi nearly willed Rutgers to an unbelievable comeback on the road, but the Scarlet Knights fell a point short in a 79-78 OT loss to Northwestern. Mulcahy’s stunning career night of 31 points (10-of-13 shooting), seven boards and seven assists was welcomed, but it’s hard to see it being replicated much down the stretch. Ron Harper Jr. still ended up with 16 points and seven boards, but it was not his night offensively, nor was it Geo Baker’s. As bad as the offense was early on, the defense was worse. “Obviously giving up 43 points in the first half is not Rutgers basketball,” Pikiell said. Ultimately, a one-point overtime loss is still a loss. Five of Rutgers’ nine losses are outside Quadrant 1, and this team sheet just isn’t shaping up to deserve a repeat tournament bid.
Seton Hall certainly made things interesting in the second half and needed the whole 40 minutes to put away last-place Georgetown, 70-63. The Hoyas (Kaiden Rice in particular) started knocking down threes in the second half, but Seton Hall overcame that with their own barrage. Tray Jackson has his weaknesses, but he continues to stand out, and the Pirates wouldn’t have won without his five triples and game-high 21 points. As long as Alexis Yetna and Tyrese Samuel are struggling, it seems like Jackson will get a larger share of the minutes. It was a win Seton Hall sorely needed to try to get things right again; next up is enigmatic Creighton, which just upset UConn on the road Tuesday night.
I omitted something important in Monday’s edition: Fairleigh Dickinson notched its second true win of the season Sunday by shellacking Central Connecticut State, 75-55. Those wins, coupled with a forfeit win on Dec. 29, put the Knights at 3-7 in the Northeast Conference. It’s a young team: Forward Anquan Hill was the third different FDU player to receive NEC rookie of the week honors a week ago, following Ibrahim Wattara and Sébastien Lamaute.