And the Madness Begins...

After taking some time to cool down from the CAA finals I can now start talking post-season for the league. VCU may have the automatic bid being the tournament champions but they won't be the only CAA in the big dance. ODU and Drexel are two interesting cases that the selection committee will be talking about before this Sunday. Resident "bracketologist" Joe Lunardi gives tournament projections all season long and has had the CAA with two bids for most of the season. Right now he has ODU as the at-large bid going with VCU. But its an interesting case in the CAA because of Drexel's out of conference success early in the year and ending up with the most road/neutral wins in the country. ODU beat the Big East regular season champ Georgetown on the road, but really don't have any other wins to speak of outside the conference. They are being considered over Drexel because they have beaten them twice this year. Keep in mind that Drexel has wins over Villanova, Syracuse, and Creighton; all of which figure to be NCAA teams. Those wins prove that the Dragons can beat the big boys and definitely have the most potential within the CAA to get some wins in the tournament. The CAA getting three bids to the big dance is not totally out of the question as some analysts have projected. Three bids for the CAA would be huge and really help the conference build off last seasons success. The problem is mid-majors often get snubbed for teams in major conferences, even ones that have losing conference records. The selection committee can't make everyone happy but last year certainly proved that RPI numbers and conference affiliation don't mean everything.

Mason and Hofstra are not to be left out of the CAA post-season mix. Hofstra is a lock for the NIT tournament where they and ODU had great success a year ago. Mason is most likely on the outside looking in but I think might get a bid just because of brand name recognition and a chance for the NIT to grab some much needed TV ratings. NIT-ology, a website that attempts to predict the NIT field, does not currently have Mason on its radar, but a lot can change in the next couple of days.