BOSTON — After a season during which a record-setting eight of its men’s and women’s basketball teams reached the postseason and combined for five victories and with 34 players who have earned conference awards in the past returning, the America East Conference announced its 2016-17 league schedules on Wednesday afternoon. The slate will consist of 144 games as teams vie for positioning ahead of the conference tournaments.
The men’s and women’s seasons will be made up of 72 regular-season contests each with all games taking place over a nine-week stretch in January and February. For the 12th season in a row, each team will play a 16-game, double round-robin schedule, which prioritizes television opportunities, competitive equity and reduction of missed class time for student-athletes.
Schedule Highlights
Men
- Playoff seeding is critical again this year as the higher seed hosts each round of the America East Playoffs for the third-straight year. Home teams are 10-2 in this format over the past two seasons and the regular-season champion has won the last two conference titles.
- The schedule begins on January 5 with four contests, including first-year head coaches Jeff Boals (Stony Brook) and Ryan Odom (UMBC) leading their teams into league action for the first time.
- Opening night is highlighted by the Seawolves visiting New Hampshire, which won a program-record 20 games last year and has the bulk of its roster returning this season, including first-team All-Conference standout, Tanner Leissner.
- Stony Brook and Albany, which have combined to win the last four America East titles and have both made postseason appearances each of the last four years, meet Jan. 8 on Long Island and Feb. 4 at Albany. The two teams have split their last 18 meetings.
- Presumptive conference favorites Vermont and New Hampshire square off on Jan. 16 at New Hampshire and Feb. 9 at Vermont. The matchups will feature six players who have earned All-Conference honors in the past in the Catamounts’ Trae Bell-Haynes, Kurt Steidl and Dre Wills and the Wildcats’ Leissner, Jacoby Armstrong and Jaleen Smith.
- A rematch of last year’s America East championship game takes place Jan. 28 at Stony Brook, where the Seawolves overcame a 15-point second-half deficit to beat Vermont, 80-74 last March. The two teams close out the season in Burlington on Feb. 25.
Women
- The women’s slate kicks off with four games on Jan. 4, including Binghamton visiting UMBC in an America East quarterfinal rematch. The Bearcats, which improved by 10 wins last year, will get 2014-15 Rookie of the Year, Jasmine Sina back from injury.
- First-year head coaches Joanna Bernabei-McNamee (Albany), Chris Day (Vermont) and Kim McNeil (Hartford) begin their first trips around the conference.
- Co-regular season champions from each of the last two years, Albany and Maine, play Jan. 22 in Albany and Feb. 18 in Maine. The Great Danes beat the Black Bears, 59-58, in last year’s title game to become the first program in league history to win five-consecutive conference championships.
- The Great Danes and Black Bears each return a first-team All-Conference standout in Imani Tate (Albany) and Sigi Koizar (Maine), who was also an Academic All-American last year.
- UMBC and Stony Brook, which both made postseason appearances in the WBI last year, meet on Jan. 25 in Baltimore and Feb. 23 on Long Island.
The men’s regular season concludes on Feb. 25 while the women’s ends on Feb. 26. On both sides, Albany will play Hartford, Binghamton takes on Maine, UMBC battles UNH and Stony Brook takes on Vermont.
The regular-season slates will decide the seeding and matchups for the America East Championships. After posting the best championship attendance numbers amongst peer conferences last year, the America East Men’s Basketball Playoffs will be played at campus sites throughout for the third-straight year. The early rounds of the women’s tournament, the America East Women’s Basketball Championship, will be held at a neutral site for the first time ever, taking place at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland March 4-5. Both championship games will be played at the highest remaining seed in each tournament with the women’s title game on March 10 and the men’s on March 11. Both will be nationally televised on ESPN networks.
America East is coming off a season in which 50 percent of the conference’s eligible teams reached the postseason, including both of Albany’s and Stony Brook’s programs. On the women’s side, Albany beat Florida in the first round of the NCAA tournament for the conference’s fifth NCAA win all-time, while UMBC won a WBI contest. On the men’s side, Vermont reached the CBI semifinals for the second-straight year while New Hampshire won a CIT first-round game, its first postseason win in school history.
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