Let’s start with the positive:

Until this year, there has been at least one NMTC team to make the tournament in every single NCAA Tournament ever held. And this year, thanks to Queens and the ASUN Conference, that streak will continue. (Congratulations to the Queens Royals on making the tournament in their first year eligible!)

Well, just about everything else.

The ASUN guaranteed us our first NMTC graduation of the year – the third ASUN team to graduate in four years – late Saturday evening, when Queens took down ASUN co-champs Austin Peay. Earlier, the ASUN’s top seed and NMTC member Central Arkansas got past Florida Gulf Coast. With an all-NMTC ASUN final guaranteeing at least one graduate, the minds of NMTC fans dreamt of much, much stronger possibilities. Three No. 1 seeds were still in play, a No. 2 seed that many felt was a favorite, and many more “fighting chances”, so to speak.

What followed was methodical elimination. Carnage of the top seeds. Dark horses that sparked hope, only to fall in brutal fashion.

The only way to process is to recap all of it, every single one.

Thank god (or any other deity you may worship) for the ASUN.

The Atlantic Sun Conference has been a mini hotbed of NMTC qualifiers. As previously mentioned, three have made it out of the club in the last four years (Kennesaw State in 2023, Stetson in 2024, and Queens this year).

Four eligible teams (North Alabama, Bellarmine, Queens, and Central Arkansas) made up the 12-team field this year, plus the much-improved and ineligible West Georgia. All eyes were on Central Arkansas after its record-setting breakthrough year. Out of nowhere, they blitzed their way to a 15-3 league record. They took down fellow NMTC Bellarmine and FGCU in their first two tourney games. Most captivating was star guard Camren Hunter, who played two years at UCA before departing for Wisconsin, where he got hardly any minutes, before returning to Conway this year. He averaged 21 points a game, second in the league, and did not disappoint in the big moments, dropping 54 points in the first two tournament games plus 49 in the ASUN title game.

Queens also had a breakout year, though overshadowed somewhat by UCA’s. But make no mistake, they were nasty. Head coach Grant Leonard, just four years removed from being an assistant on the Queens staff while they were D-II, has steadily improved them each of the last three years. This year, they were a top-20 scoring team in the nation and had six players average double-figure scoring. They won their first seven conference games on their way to a 13-5 finish, but they went 0-3 against the top two teams, Austin Peay and Central Arkansas.

That changed in a big way, obviously, in the tournament. They held off Austin Peay for the entire second half, matching every mini-run with an answer and never letting them draw even. Then, in the championship game, they fell behind 8-0 to Central Arkansas, before immediately matching that with an 8-0 run of their own and leading most of the rest of the way (75% of the game in total)

By the under-4 media timeout in the second half, Queen held an 11-point lead. A huge reason why was Chris Ashby (who has the apt Twitter handle @1Cashby). The fourth-year Queens Royal shot only three pointers on the night – 19 of them to be exact – and drilled 10 of them, on his way to a 34-point night, nearly tripling his 11.7 point season average.

But he was outdone by the aforementioned Hunter, whose truly ridiculous outburst at the regulation forced overtime in a game that looked in hand for Queens. Trailing 73-62 with just over three to play, Hunter scored ALL TWENTY OF UCA’S POINTS in the remainder of regulation. He made all but one of his shots and all but one of his free throws in this stretch, almost singlehandedly willing his Bears to keep their season alive. Queens, for their part, turned it over six times down this stretch and missed several free throws. With under five seconds to play, and down two points, Hunter hit a daring spin-move-to-floater combination that sent the game to overtime.

Queens didn’t let the blown lead ruin their season. Ashby scored the first five points of the extra period, and Hunter couldn’t muster the same amount of magic, getting up only three shots and turning it over three times. Hunter finished with a staggering tournament record of 49 points.

But in the end, Queens is the one dancing in their very first year of eligibility.

We talk all the time about the Dumbest Rule. How it’s screwed over teams like Merrimack and Bellarmine. Well, Queens manipulated it perfectly, building a team until it peaked at just the right time. But not only that, recall that the Dumbest Rule transition postseason ban was shortened from four years to three last year. So Queens is making it in just its fourth year of Division I hoops, which means, as far as we can tell, in the transition period era, Queens now holds the distinction of fastest team to qualify.

If you were pulling for Central Arkansas, which has been an eligible NMTC member for a decade and a half now, that’s understandable. Not only that, but it’s always good to see NMTC teams qualify in years that they earn it by winning the regular season crown.

But one more tidbit about Queens: just this past September, it was announced that Elon and Queens were merging. And with mergers often come merging of athletics (just ask LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post). For their part, they’ve announced that they’ll maintain separate athletic programs for now. But we have no idea how long that will last. Bottom line, we may have limited time to enjoy Queens as Queens. So maybe it’s a good thing that they’re the ones that made it.

Congratulations, Queens University of Charlotte. It’s time to go dancing.

The Bad, jk the Really Ugly

Just a couple of hours after securing our first bid, we were dealt a blow of reality. Remember all the stuff we were saying about not seeing the Summit League as a wretched league anymore? We might need to hold off on that.

St. Thomas was the preseason favorite and led the conference in most predictive metrics despite finishing the season two games behind North Dakota State. So we were at least looking for a run to the title game for the Tommies. An easy dub against the evil empire, South Dakota State, in the first seemed to confirm our suspicions that the curse might indeed be dead.

Then, a semifinal matchup against North Dakota, which hadn’t really joined in yet on the heartbreak-creating in this conference tournament. St. Thomas, an 11.5-point favorite, led for two-thirds of the game, to 13% for North Dakota. Yet the Tommies continued to let UND hang around. But when North Dakota turned it over to St. Thomas in a tie game with under 30 seconds to play, at least we were going to see St. Thomas have a shot at the win. Worst case, we go to overtime.

Well, guess what! There was an even worse case than overtime!

So St. Thomas didn’t even get a rematch with NDSU, which it beat by more than 20 just a couple of weeks prior. Instead, it got to feel its own version of the Summit Plummet. Welcome to Division I basketball, buddy.

Oh well, couldn’t get that much worse, could it?

The Bad, jk the Excruciatingly Painful, the prelude

It feels right to do this next section in chronological order, starting on Tuesday evening, with the beginning of the end.

UMass Lowell and NJIT both grinded their way to well-earned home playoff games. UMass Lowell fought back from a rough start to finish in the top half of the league. NJIT had one of its best seasons in years. Both handled business in their home quarterfinal matchups. NJIT had a particularly exciting buzzer-beating win over fellow NMTC-er Maine that we were present for!

Sadly, both were handled easily on the road by UMBC and Vermont, respectively, in the semifinals. It was bad, but technically not unexpected, considering the seed lines and the fact that Vermont was involved. It would be fine once Merrimack won their title game…

The Bad, jk the Excruciatingly Painful, part 1

…oh, dang it, Merrimack. When will we be Merry together?

Last year, second-seed Merrimack fell in the semifinals, just after the top seed fell, and seemingly opened a path for them. This year, the top-seed Warriors, winners of a notoriously parity-filled MAAC by three full games, survived that round – barely. They were pushed by a game Marist team in a contest where everything seemed to conspire against them, but one blown layup and interesting time management by the Red Foxes in the dying seconds saw Merrimack through to the title game. Third-seed Siena, which Merrimack beat twice (both in close games), would be the final foe.

Demons conquered? Not quite.

The demons seemed to be whispering to Merrimack that scoring in the first 10 minutes of halves was a bad thing to do and to do it as little as possible. Siena went on a 22-3 run to take the lead by 15 points just 10 minutes into the game. They missed 13 of 14 shots. Finally, they remembered to score, and scored ten straight points in the final two minutes to pull the margin back to 3.

But the demon-induced cold spell to start the second half spelled their doom. The Warriors missed their first 15 (!!) field goals of the first half (and missed their two free throws) in a scoreless first nine minutes of the half, as Siena went on a 12-0 run to make the margin 15 again. After Kevair Kennedy’s layup broke the streak, they went scoreless for almost another four minutes before again coming to life. In a nearly 3:30-minute stretch, Merrimack went on a 15-4 run to bring the deficit to four with just under four to play.

But they’d get no closer. A key triple by Siena pushed the lead out to seven with about two minutes left, and Merrimack did not recover. The banged-up Siena Saints, who played only six players, would go dancing. They outrebounded Merrimack 50-26. Merrimack shot just 29% for the game.

And here we are again, Merrimack. Four regular-season titles. One conference tournament title. Three championship game appearances. No NCAA Tournament appearances.

Joe Gallo, please don’t go until you see this thing through.

The Bad, jk the Excruciatingly Painful, parts 2 and 3

So, that was bad. But there’s always a new day. The next day, Bethune-Cookman, who entered as the SWAC’s only NMTC team, but also as that conference’s number one seed, would begin play.

Wait, hold on, what? Vaquero noises intensifying?

Yeah, that’s right. Before Tuesday night was over, we were in for a roller coaster we didn’t see coming. UTRGV had a phenomenal season and beat McNeese at home, but still, beating McNeese and SFA on McNeese’s home floor seemed like a gargantuan task. They took the court in their semifinal game that night, determined to prove that wasn’t true, that they were a legitimate contender. Against McNeese in their building, they erased a double-digit first-half deficit and matched every single McNeese micro-run in the second half. With time winding down at the end of regulation, they had a shot at the upset.

Again, UTRGV matched McNeese move for move. Again, with time winding down in overtime, they had another shot at the upset.

Again, UTRGV matched McNeese move for move. Actually, they were doing better, holding a three point lead under two to play.

This time, there was an abysmal call though that changed the trajectory of the game. With a three-point UTRGV lead with just over a minute to play, McNeese missed a shot that caromed off a UTRGV player, before a different Vaquero player scooped up the ball in the corner. Only, the shot clock started off of the carom. So by the time UTRGV secured the ball in the corner, the shot clock was at 28, when it should have reset right there. They moved the ball up court against mild pressure, crossing the mid-court line with 20 seconds to go. The refs ruled a 10-second violation.

But even they sensed something was wrong. It didn’t feel like 10 seconds. So they went to the monitor and clearly saw that the shot clock started early. So they gave UTRGV the ball.

Except no, they didn’t. They saw clearly what happened and STILL said that it was a violation. McNeese ball. I don’t criticize refs too much, for it’s a hard job – but when you’re looking at a slow-motion replay of something obvious and STILL don’t get the call right, I’m going to call “corruption” until I hear a good explanation otherwise. And I still haven’t heard an explanation.

McNeese used the extra possession to help tie the game again. And STILL, with time winding down in DOUBLE overtime, they had another shot at the upset.

Again, UTRGV matched McNeese move for move.

Well, almost. This time, McNeese took a two-point lead before the final sequence. UTRGV had the ball down two, with another shot at the upset:

Unbelievable. Three hours. Four shots at the win. Wasted. On that.

The worst part is we weren’t really expecting this one. Then they drew us in. And gave us hope. And the refs snuffed out that hope.

UTRGV still hasn’t even been to a conference title game, let alone win one. And they’re one of the longer-tenured club members. Alas, the conference didn’t want anyone other than McNeese and SFA in the game. And so they wait longer. And so we seethe. Arrrrrrgh.

So we slept it off. Maybe Tuesday would be the end of it. As I said, Bethune-Cookman, top-seed in the SWAC, was going. When it took the floor on Wednesday afternoon, the NMTC was down badly, desperate for a win.

Bethune, like Merrimack, also won a notoriously crowded conference by three full games. It had looked competitive at times in the nonconference. Its first game was against the lowly 8-seed Prairie View A&M, but the task was not easy. Prairie View held the lead for most of the first half.

But then Bethune surged ahead. It had a seven-point lead with under seven to play, then watched as their opponents closed the gap, finally retaking the lead with 44 seconds to play. Bethune had one chance to respond. It had its shot blocked, Prairie View made its free throws. And another top contender had its season go up in smoke.

That was truly brutal, one of the more brutal stretches in NMTC history, perhaps. I make the argument that this might be the worst year of the NMTC ever. For people who say it isn’t because a team made the field, every year has seen an NMTC member graduate, so by definition, the worst year so far will have been a year where at least one team graduated. (The only argument you could make against that would be the year 2020, where, besides the fact that a global pandemic ruined everything, it wasn’t looking so hot for the NMTC. But I’m going to put that in a separate category.)

To have that many favorites fall in the way they did in such a short amount of time feels historically cruel. Of course, I haven’t been covering for all that long. This I tell you, though, if the WAC – the closest thing to a certain NMTC bid – somehow fails to produce one, this will be the worst year in history, unequivocally.

Speaking of the WAC, somehow, the regular season outcomes in the final year of the WAC – where four of seven teams are Club members – weren’t the main focus of ours this year. The actual games of the tournament were arguably not the top story of the WAC this week.

Consider the Utah Valley Wolverines. A university that has remained pretty much out of the public eye except for its basketball team, a team that has become one of, if not the best, NMTC teams over the last few years. The last few years, they’ve been the only team to routinely be in the double digits of KenPom and/or NET.

With the WAC appearing to be on the verge of crumbling, they decided to jump ship to the Big West, where they’ll begin play next year. But the WAC apparently ordered them to pay a $1 million exit fee that it says was contractually obligated. When Utah Valley did not pay, the conference, at the beginning of February, banned UVU from participating in the postseason for all sports and removed it from all WAC streaming platforms. (Utah Valley contended that the other departing members of the conference didn’t pay the fee, so it didn’t need to pay.) Utah Valley ended up getting a judge to grant them an injunction to play in postseason tournaments for two weeks and return to streaming platforms. When the two weeks were about to expire just before the conference tournaments, it requested and received an extension.

Flash forward to Tuesday, the WAC unilaterally announced that if Utah Valley did not place the $1 million in escrow by 5 p.m. THAT DAY, then they would be removed from the basketball brackets.

UVU did end up doing this, and the WAC backed off. But the next day, UVU publicly acknowledged the fiasco with a statement in a nine-graphic thread on social media, claiming the school thought it had agreed with the league that it didn’t owe the exit fee. The school stated it worked with the District Court in Utah, and that the payment would be placed in an escrow account by the WAC’s self-imposed deadline. Finally, the Wolverines could play after months of back and forth with a conference that won’t exist in a few months.

(If you are looking for good, insightful local reporting on this, go read Brice Larson, a Utah sports reporter who has covered this saga.)

All this is overshadowing what should be a great NMTC moment. The WAC is as close to a sure thing as there could possibly be in terms of getting an NMTC team into the field. And they nearly banished our top soldier, Utah Valley, the regular-season champs. There are only seven teams in the WAC’s final year, and four of them are NMTC, including the top three seeds of the tournament: Utah Valley, Cal Baptist, and Utah Tech. We’ve now reached the semifinal stage, and the top seeds are still alive (sorry to Tarleton, which dealt with turmoil this year). If Utah Valley can beat the only remaining non-NMTC interloper in UT Arlington tonight, we are guaranteed a graduate.

So, we should be getting a second graduate tonight or tomorrow. But as I said, if somehow UT Arlington sneaks through and nabs the title, this will be forever known as the worst NMTC year on record.

Ah, Chicago State. The fan favorites pulled up the rear of the NEC in their second year in the league. But throw everything out the window, especially in the NEC. Long Island, the far-and-away best team in the conference, could not pull away from the visiting Cougars. Suddenly, it was just a two-point LIU lead, with Chicago State holding possession under 20 seconds to play. But CJ Ray picked up a charging foul, LIU made two free throws,s and hung on.

MAN! What a rush that would have been.

In the OVC, both UT Martin and Lindenwood had better-than-expected seasons. Unfortunately, neither could pull an upset in the tournament. 6-seed Lindenwood fell in a nail-biting quarterfinal to 3-seed SEMO, and 4-seed UT Martin suffered a third loss of the year to top seed and eventual tournament champs Tennessee State.

The 6-seed Presbyterian Blue Hose got in on the fun in the Big South. After trailing Radford by double digits early, Presbyterian forced overtime against 3-seed Radford on a deep, banked-in heave, and would go on to win. Against heavily favored Winthrop in the next round, the Blue Hose again fell behind big early, and still by eight points with under two minutes to play, before a late surge saw them down two points, bringing the ball up the court with seven seconds to play. Just as we all allowed hope to creep in, coach Quinton Ferrell called an interesting timeout as his player loaded up for a decent three-point look. Instead, inbounding with three seconds, Presbyterian only got a desperation heave, and the hope disappeared as soon as it arrived.

In the CAA, it looked like UNC Wilmington had to lose. William and Mary down at the sixth seed didn’t look too inspiring. Then, top-seed Wilmington Lost. Second-seed Charleston got crushed. Things were beginning to open up. Suddenly, if William and Mary could pull a similar upset against third-seed Hofstra, it would be the second-highest team remaining…and then the Tribe got crushed by 31 points.

The Dumbest Rule Strikes Yet Again?

Mercyhurst made the NEC title game in its second year in Division I. But the Dumbest Rule means they didn’t get to go to the dance, regardless of the result at Long Island last Tuesday. Mercyhurst didn’t win, but the Dumbest Rule, besides being unnecessarily punitive, is also a potential buzzkill of excitement. The champion was decided prior to the game, when Mercyhurst defeated the newly eligible Stonehill at home in the semifinals. In this case, the LIU-Wagner game then became the de facto championship, and since it was played after Mercyhurst’s game, it had the excitement. But in other instances, the emotion that should come from a team winning to clinch its spot in the dance can be delayed and muted.

Just get rid of it, NCAA. You can make sure the schools are fulfilling any checkpoints you want while also letting them play.

Women’s NMTC: shockingly slow!

As we mentioned last week, the women’s side tends to have more graduates a year, as there are just the same amount of teams (minus VMI and Citadel, trivia if you didn’t know), but the tournament has been around for 40 fewer years.

But at the time of writing, there have been 18 tickets punched, and not a single one has been NMTC.

The closest was North Dakota State, which won the Summit regular season crown this year but fell to powerhouse South Dakota State in the semifinals. We won’t bury them just yet, because the 28-4 Bison have a shot at an at-large bid – they’re right now in Charlie Creme’s first four out, for instance. (Come on, committee, do the right thing.)

Air Force, the 9-seed in the Mountain West, shocked everyone by upsetting top-seed and 19-1 in-conference San Diego State, and then followed it up with a win over Boise State. Alas, their Cinderella run ended at the hands of Colorado State in the finals. Lindenwood also made the OVC final but fell in a close one to Western Illinois. (Lindenwood had to beat Southern Indiana in the semis, a team that has also been victimized by the Dumbest Rule, having won the OVC tourney in 2024.)

There’s still plenty of hope, though. Charleston, the top seed in the CAA, is in the semifinals. As of typing, Maryland-Eastern Shore is in a semifinal battle to advance to the finals against Howard (and UMES hasn’t made it either men’s or women’s basketball, baseball, or softball, so this would be a rather big deal) Alabama A&M, the top seed in the SWAC, was just upset today by Southern in the semis, but 7-seed Arkansas-Pine Bluff is trying to keep its Cinderella story alive later this evening. 5-seed Tarleton will also go for an upset of WAC favorites Cal Baptist in the WAC semifinals.

Elon, Denver, Kansas City, Sacred Heart, North Alabama, New Hampshire, and Youngstown State were eliminated as expected with little fanfare.

Sacramento State’s first season of the Shaq- and Mike Bibby-led rebuild (and their last in the Big Sky before heading to the Big West) ended with an eighth-place regular season finish and first-round loss. USC Upstate closed out its season by losing to abysmal Gardner-Webb, who had only one Division 1 win all year (also against USC Upstate). South Dakota lost convincingly in its 4-5 Summit League matchup against last year’s grads, Omaha. UMES, who started 4-0 in MEAC play before losing 9 of their last 10, forced overtime against the 3-seed NC Central before falling.

The Citadel won a game! Then lost the next one. But hey, that single win should be celebrated.

———————————————————————

Thanks for reading! We will have one more closing article this year, but until then, stay tuned to our Twitter account (@NMTC_Hoops), Bluesky account (@nmtchoops.bsky.social), and our famous NMTC Spreadsheet, which tracks every NMTC team’s progress. See you next time!