What it Takes to Win the MAAC Championship
At high noon on March 6, the 2003 EUS Communications
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Basketball Tournament begins. The
10th place women's team, Iona, has earned the honor of kicking off
the 18-games in five days tournament, and will face the fifth place
team. The reward for winning that game will be a game against the
fourth place team, which received a first-round bye. And if you happen
to defeat the fourth place team, you get to play the well-rested number
one seed in the semi-finals. The number one seed receives two byes,
right into the semi-finals.
"With the structure the way it
is now, the first step in winning the title is to finish first,"
said Rider head coach Eldon Price. "That puts you in a
great position to win the tournament when you only have to win two
games."
And if you don't finish first? "Teams
that have the best opportunity to win usually have an outstanding
point guard, and if you look at the teams who are at the top of the
standings right now (Manhattan, Siena, Saint Peter's, Niagara), they
all have a great point guard," Price said. "Secondly, you
need a solid inside player, and with the exception of maybe one team
(Niagara), the teams that are at the top of the standings right now
all have outstanding big people inside."
Along with talented personnel, other
factors are involved "You need to be healthy, and you have to
enter the tournament playing well at that time, feeling good about
yourself, have some momentum going in," Price said. "In
any tournament I've been involved in at least one game is decided
on a last second shot, and you need to avoid being on the wrong end
of an upset loss like that, so some luck is involved." Last year
Rider defeated Iona twice during the regular season but lost to the
Gaels on a last second shot in the playoffs.
With the new format, the bottom six
teams play each other first, and those three winners play teams 2-3-4
in the second round. Those three winners advance to the semi-finals,
along with the top seed. So if you are not in the top four, you have
to win four, to win the title.
"To win four straight games in
four days, that is a stretch for any team, most teams don't have enough
bodies to be able to do that," Price said. "I've always
felt that in that situation, the toughest game is the third one. Somewhere
during the season most teams have played on back-to-back days, but
to play three in a row at play-off intensity level really takes a
lot out of you. If you can get past that third game with a win, the
fourth game is almost all on adrenaline."
The Broncs appear to be locked into
a ninth place finish, and would have to beat the sixth and third seeds
to get to the Title Game, at high noon on Sunday, March 9. Can the
Broncs win four in a row? "The real key in any tournament is
the match-ups, who you draw," said Price. "I know for a
fact that there are some teams in this league who do not want to play
Rider in the first round. We match up pretty well with some of them."
The Broncs have been led by their Super
Sophomores, Becky Hower, Katie Hall and Leanne Moore,
who are combining for 47.8 points per game, 68.8 percent of the team's
scoring. "For us to win the tournament, we have to have big games
from all three of our scorers, Hall, Hower and Moore," Price
said. "Almost every game one of them has a good game, and a lot
of the times two of them have good games at the same time, but our
opponents have been able to shut down the third one. We need to get
all three to have a good game at the same time for us to do well in
the tournament."
Since joining the MAAC, Rider has reached
the quarterfinals three times in five years. Now they must win four
games in four days for the Title. "We know we have to win four,"
Price said. "Do we have the bodies to do that is the question.
We only go about eight deep in our player rotation, but if somehow
we can gain some momentum going into the tournament we have a chance.
We've played well in the Sovereign Bank Arena in the past, so that's
an advantage for us."
The 2003 MAAC Women's Basketball Tournament.
It begins at High Noon on March 6, and ends with the Title Game at
High Noon on March 9. The Rider Broncs are hoping to be playing all
four days.
