MAAC Lacrosse Tournament: It's Still a League!

Every Division I tournament. Every team. College Crosse has it all on lockdown. Please send cookies and naptime. Today we're slashing to bits the MAAC Tournament.

If the NCAA ever decides to go away from automatic invitations to the national tournament I may get my hands on a gun and drive angrily to Indianapolis to exercise my Second Amendment rights. (Second Amendment rights involve pawning a gun for stationary so that you can hand-deliver a disgruntled letter of disapproval, right? Cool.) With the auto-bid, the Championships get a taste of teams that are competitive enough to hang around with the blue-bloods but would otherwise be excluded from the show if all invitations were made at-large.

Siena, in 2012, is one of those teams that are going to benefit from an automatic bid and, if they get the right draw, could steal a win in the big bracket. The Saints have lots of pieces that can frustrate the hell out of any opponent: they have the goalie in Tom Morr and two offensive threats -- Bryan Neufeld and Danny Martinsen -- that are as good as any in the country. Assuming Siena doesn't fall apart in Poughkeepsie over the next few days, the Saints are going to be an interesting opponent for a preferentially-seeded team.

A fancy infographic and truncated team profiles will follow, but for now, here's an overview of the 2012 MAAC Tournament that you can study non-stop until your eyes bleed. Everything gets moving with the Siena Invititational on May 4, 2012.

CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT: MAAC

In the overall, the MAAC has looked like your Christmas lights when you pull them out of the box in early-December: It's mostly chaos that makes you want to quit religion with a few strands that haven't, somehow, been pulled into the madness. Siena and Manhattan, at opposite ends of the linear spectrum, managed to avoid frustration-alleviating cursing while the rest of the league -- VMI (2-4), Canisius, Jacksonville, Marist, and Detroit (all 3-3) -- tangled themselves into a web that made you throw up your hands in anger, quit trying to figure out how this mess all started, and declare everything as "Cancelled on account of being horsesh*t!" while fixing yourself a tall glass of brown glory.

Here's how each team stacks up in some legacy metrics:

Obviously anything can happen in a single-elimination tournament -- and Siena has had some instances of "Huh?" this year -- but it would be the upset of the season if the Saints don't walk away from this weekend with a bus trip (or plane ticket) booked for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Here's the shakedown on the big offensive weapons taking the field this weekend:

T.O.V. = Total Offensive Value (individual points per 100 offensive possessions). This is updated through all games played by May 2, 2012.
Rank = National T.O.V. rank. This is updated through all games played by May 2, 2012.

So, that's your overview. Who are you taking to take home top honors?