The final score from last night’s SCGD between Auburn and Georgia was 57-49. As noone cares who won, I won’t even bother saying.
For tonight’s game, we turn our focus back to the true small conferences and head over to the MAAC (7:00PM Eastern, espn3). First place is on the line as Iona (14-7, 8-2) heads to Niagara (13-8, 9-1). This is the second meeting of the season between the two teams. Iona won the first, all the way back on November 28, to hand the Purple Eagles their only conference loss of the season. Despite Niagara’s great conference record, they did not play well in the non-conference season, including bad losses to Buffalo, Brown and Central Michigan.
Iona has also suffered some ugly losses on the season so far. The Gaels have losses to Quinnipiac, Illinois-Chicago and St. Peter’s already. However, they also picked up a handful of decent wins, including games against Denver, St. Bonaventure, Wake Forest and Georgia (ok, those last couple are not exactly great teams, but hey, Georgia did play in the SCGD last night).
Needless to say, the MAAC is not in a position this season to put an at-large team into the NCAA tournament. However, between Niagara, Iona, and some solid teams in Loyola, Canisius and Fairfield, this should be a fun conference to watch the rest of the way and could be one of the more exicting conference tournaments come March.