CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — After a season that saw six of its men’s and women’s basketball teams reach the postseason and one win an NCAA tournament game, the America East Conference announced its 2014-15 league schedules on Thursday. The slate will feature 144 games, the majority of which can be seen on AmericaEast.TV, including several marquis matchups as teams vie for positioning ahead of the conference tournaments, which will feature revamped formats this season.The men’s and women’s seasons will consist of 72 regular-season contests each with the majority of games taking place in January and February. For the 10th season in a row, each team will play a 16-game, double round-robin schedule which will decide the seeding and matchups for the America East Championships. The men’s tournament, the America East Men’s Basketball Playoffs, will be played at campus sites throughout, the first time the conference has used high seed format since 1995. The early rounds of the women’s tournament, the America East Women’s Basketball Championship, will be held at Binghamton University’s Events Center for the first time since 2007, with the championship game at the highest remaining seed.“We cannot wait for the upcoming basketball season to begin,” said America East Commissioner Amy Huchthausen. “Last season’s success, including Albany men winning an NCAA game, paired with several of the league's top players returning for this season, strong teams taking shape and exciting, new championship formats will result in an action-packed, competitive season ahead. These schedules provide our fans with several intriguing matchups throughout the winter as our teams men's teams fight for home court advantage in the playoffs and the women fight for the best seed possible in Binghamton."Schedule HighlightsMen
- Playoff seeding is even more crucial than past years as the top four seeds will host quarterfinal games and the highest remaining seeds will play semifinal contests at home.
- Vermont, last year’s regular-season champion, will host Hartford in the first conference contest of the season on Dec. 3.
- Stony Brook and Vermont, which have combined to win the last five America East regular-season titles and both made postseason appearances last season, first play on Jan. 10 at Vermont with the second matchup taking place Feb. 7 on Long Island.
- A rematch of the 2014 title game occurs on Jan. 19 when Albany, which won its second-straight league title and beat Mount St. Mary’s in the first round of the NCAA tournament, visits Stony Brook. Albany beat the Seawolves, 69-60, last March to claim its four-ever America East crown.
- The return game will be Feb. 17 in Albany.
- Albany and Hartford play Jan. 22 at Hartford and Feb. 20 in Albany. The series will feature three of the league’s top returnees in the Great Dane’s Peter Hooley, the Most Outstanding Player of last year’s America East Championship, and Sam Rowley and the Hawks’ Mark Nwakamma, a two-time first-team all-conference standout.
Women
- The women’s slate kicks off on Jan. 3 with four games, including three-time defending league champion Albany visiting Maine, which returns the bulk of its team that made the program’s first postseason appearance in nine seasons last year.
- Key matchups include a 2014 championship game rematch, which takes place on Jan. 19, with Albany hosting Stony Brook, which made its first postseason appearance (NIT) since 2006 last season. The Great Danes beat the Seawolves, 70-46, last March to win its third-straight league crown.
- The return meeting is Feb. 22 at Stony Brook’s renovated Stony Brook Arena.
- Hartford, the winner of five league titles since 2002, visits Albany and Stony Brook in consecutive games Jan. 25 and 29.
The men’s regular season concludes on Feb. 28 while the women’s ends on March 1. On both sides Albany will play Vermont, Binghamton takes on UMBC, Hartford plays Stony Brook and New Hampshire faces Maine.
Following the conclusion of the regular seasons, the 2014 America East tournaments take place at different places for the first time since 2009. The Men’s Basketball Playoffs kick off with quarterfinal action on Wednesday, March 4 at the sites of the top four seeds. The semifinals will take place Sunday, March 8 at the two highest remaining seeds. Meanwhile the women’s tournament kicks off in Binghamton with quarterfinal and semifinal action March 7-8.
Both championship games will be played at the highest remaining seed in each tournament with the women’s title game on March 13 and the men’s on March 14. Both will be nationally televised. The league’s full television schedule will be announced at a later date.
America East is coming off a season in which 38 percent of the conference’s eligible teams reached the postseason, including both of Albany’s programs, which became the seventh school to capture both basketball crowns in the same season a year ago and advance to the NCAA tournament. Vermont played in the NIT, the league’s fifth-straight appearance while Stony Brook made its fourth postseason appearance in five seasons, playing in the CBI.
Three women’s programs reached the postseason a year ago, including Albany’s second-straight NCAA appearance. The Great Danes were joined by Stony Brook (NIT) and Maine (NIT) extending America East’s streak of years with multiple teams in the postseason to nine, which is tied for the longest in the nation among non-FBS conferences.