Originally Posted by Anonymous
Stony Brook is very young this year, talented but very young. I like that Spallina never uses that as a crutch and speaks about goals of Final 4 etc. But they will be young and have their work cut out for them. Think they will lose 2/3 games but be in the mix for a 7 or 8 I have seen many other coaches (Florida this year) use the youth as an excuse. Not having the Auto Bid will be interesting but looking at SB schedule they have done a good job with OOC games and teams that will boost RPI obviously wins are best but just playing those games plus Hartford not playing this year will keep that RPI high. You win a few of those and they will maintain a high seed.

Regardless I think a bigger story is JMU and SB being At Large teams will knock others out.

It will come down to RPI, quality wins and strength of schedule etc… as The NCAA defines them…. They have done some odd things in the past… especially on the Men’s side.

We will not know who falls where until the regular season ends. Stony Brook has done a good job over the years at scheduling high caliber programs for their OOC games. JMU always plays challenging OOC schedule as well. As stated above , we will not know how it all shake out until the games are played but it looks like JMU has the tougher row to [ChillLaxin].

All SBU and JMU can do now is play who they have on the schedule.

The good news for SBU is the “projected” top four teams on their schedule have some challenges to deal with. Syracuse has a new coach and some injury issues. Florida lost a lot of mainstays to graduation. Princeton has been off for two years. NOrthwestern is without their strongest offensive player.

JMU and Stony Brook will now be competing with ACC, B1G, Ivy and any other conference that usually gets multiple Bids.

It should be interesting to say the least, every game will matter and it could very much come down to head to head. Syracuse, Florida, Princeton, Dartmouth and Hopkins are critical because of the importance of Head to Head outcomes when deciding who gets an at large bid.