Moon Township, Pa. - Please excuse Robert Morris University head coach Andrew Toole if he seemed dismissive of the Northeast Conference coaches preseason poll released Tuesday.
And never mind that the coaches picked the Colonials to finish second behind defending champion LIU Brooklyn.
"The most important thing is production rather than predictions,'' Toole said. "Everyone's going to look at their predictions and see all of this stuff, but it's the team that's going to produce the whole year that's going to give themselves the best chance to be successful.''
Whichever team winds up winning the NEC Tournament championship will have to weather a host of unknowns and intangibles before it learns who and where it will play in the NCAA Tournament.
"So much goes on during the course of the year,'' Toole said. "There a million different things that can impact where you end up.''
Case in point?
The Colonials will be without senior center Lijah Thompson, who will miss this season after sustaining a knee injury in late September.
Thompson injured his knee trying to make a move during a workout.
"He caught the ball and cut to the basket and went to elevate,'' Toole said. "There was no contact. There was no one around him. As soon as he took off, his leg didn't really go with him. We knew it was pretty serious.''
It's a pretty serious loss, too.
There are the numbers. Last season, Thompson averaged 7.3 points, 4.2 rebounds and 19.8 minutes per game. He shot 46.7 percent from the field and a career-best 79.4 percent from the free throw line.
But there's other impactful stuff involved with Thompson going down.
"He's a senior and there's his understanding of what we're doing,'' Toole said. "It's probably much bigger than most people would understand. It makes our strategy that much more difficult. It's really big.
"Going into the year, you thought you had two players at every position who would be able to help you. Lijah was fully healthy (after battling foot problems last season), and we were excited to have a fully healthy, energetic, experienced Lijah Thompson, and that's not going to be the case. It changes the way you have to sub and changes your game-planning. As well as when you look in the league and you look at the people you're going to compete against -- whether it's LIU's front court or Quinnipiac's front court and some of the other front courts in the league. You need size and you need experience down there.
"So it hurts a lot.''
"He was definitely a big part of our team,'' said senior guard Velton Jones, who Tuesday was named to the All-NEC Preseason Team. "He's a senior who's experienced. He's been through everything with us. To have him go down, it hurts. But we just have to keep moving and keep working hard every day.''
With Thompson out, the Colonials will need increased production from inside force Mike McFadden, who averaged 8.4 points and 4.3 rebounds per game while shooting 53.9 percent from the field last season in his first RMU season after transferring from Iona.
RMU will also have to rely more on newcomers Vaughn Morgan and Stephan Hawkins and returnee Keith Armstrong, who played sparingly as a freshman. Keeping McFadden out of foul will be paramount.
The NEC is using a different scheduling format this season. Instead of each team playing two league games in early December and then taking a break from NEC play until early January, the league will contest all its conference games in January and February and on the first Saturday in March.
"I didn't mind those two (early) league games when they were home games for us because they at least helped us get a couple home games early in the year,'' Toole said. "But I think it's a hard thing to be in your non-conference schedule, switch your hat onto your conference games, get your guys to understand how important those are and then re-ramp them up come January.
"Now we know when we get into our conference season that those next 18 games are going to be the most important 18 games we play -- especially in a league like ours where things are so close and homecourt advantage is up for grabs every night in terms of the NEC Tournament."
Another point about playing all the conference games after December is that mid-season transfers will be eligible for all the NEC games. Last season, because of NCAA transfer rules, McFadden didn't become eligible until Dec. 17 and thus missed those first two early NEC games.
Toole's point about the parity in the NEC rings true.
"I think (parity) is something that's new for our league, because there finally is true parity in our league,'' he said. "There are a number of different teams that can win the championship this year, and teams that can go out and compete in non-conference. I think it's something that's different. I think when you really look up and down your league schedule, there aren't a whole lot of days that you look and say, 'OK, we got that one or we got that one.' I think it's become (much tougher) over the last three, four, five years.''
In light of that, one wonders if the NEC might some year change its conference tournament set-up. Currently, eight of the league's 12 teams qualify for the event that determines the NEC's representative in the NCAA Tournament.
Could the league eventually include all 12 teams? Perhaps have the bottom four finishers compete in some kind of play-in event to qualify for the NEC Tournament? Or maybe give first-round byes to the top four regular-season finishers?
Toole said a change has been discussed. The coaches are in favor of having each team play. Administrators? Not so much.
"I think there's a possibility that at some point it becomes 12 teams,'' Toole said. "You finish the regular season on a Saturday, so you could have play-in games on Tuesday, and then Thursday you play your first-round games. If you finish first through eighth, you don't have to play that Tuesday. There's your advantage.
"And if you don't have a successful regular season, well, you'd have to win four games in a row. If you can do that, more power to you.''
