Get To Know a College Basketball Mid-Major: Patriot League

You know all about the Power 6 conferences in college basketball. You hear about those more than any other, and those groups often dominate the March Madness conversation. There are 31 other conferences out there, however, and our goal is to get you up to speed on the teams, players and fights in the standings to know before the conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the official start of March Madness.

It’s time for you to get to know a mid-major: this time, it’s the Patriot League.

You might think it’s called the "Patriot League" because both Army and Navy are within it, but the respective entry of those schools came after the name change from the Colonial League, which initially formed to be something of a partner-slash-rival of the Ivy League: a conference without athletic scholarships that put the student portion of "student-athlete" at the forefront. While there are associate members for assorted other sports, for basketball purposes, the Patriot League includes 10 members.

It is not a conference known for its basketball, however, which partially has to do with some of the teams it’s lost along the way and that some of the more significant basketball schools it has had as associate members — like Villanova — were not there for basketball in the first place. Still, the Patriot League is a mid-major with automatic bids to the men’s and women’s editions of March Madness, and even has some wins in the tourney to point to.

All 10 teams in the conference qualify for the Patriot League tournament and a chance at the automatic bid, with the first six teams in the conference getting a bye to the quarterfinals while the latter four have a play-in first round to determine which teams will take on the first- and second-seed schools. For both men’s and women’s, the automatic bid is the lone way into March Madness.

Patriot League — Men’s College Basketball

Leaders:

• Points Per Game: Nasir Whitlock, Lehigh, 20.4
• Rebounds Per Game: Aidan Kehoe, Navy, 10.6 (7th in D-I)
• Assists Per Game: Jalen Cox, Colgate, 5.4
• Steals Per Game: Donovan Draper, Navy, 2.0
• Blocks Per Game: Hank Alvey, Lehigh, 1.8

Navy is comfortably ahead in the Patriot League, at 12-1, and has won eight in a row through Feb. 11 — Colgate is two games back, but that’s as close as it gets. Lehigh is 7-6, which marks the third and final team over .500. American, Loyola Maryland and Boston University are 6-7, Bucknell and Lafayette are 5-8, and both Army and Holy Cross are 4-9. The good news there is that even the worst teams aren’t getting pummeled by everyone, allowing there to be genuine questions as to which teams will make it out of the early rounds of the tournament, but Navy and Colgate are the only teams in the top-200 in the NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET… and also the only teams in the top-250. The lack of a gap for much of the conference is due to the fact that eight of the 10 teams sit between 257th and 337th in NET. Navy and Colgate might not qualify as bubble teams, but they still tower over most of the rest of the Patriot League.

Another way to put it: Navy has played in 20 Quad 4 games. Every Patriot League game, and some besides, have been Quad 4 — all the non-Quad 4 games on the schedule came in the non-conference portion of it. But before you get the wrong idea, one of its two Quad 4 losses also came against Patriot League competition — against American — so Navy isn’t unstoppable, either. Though, it’s worth pointing out that, in its one Quad 1 game — against UNC — Navy kept it competitive, 73-61.

Will Navy come out of the Patriot League, or is one of the teams trailing it bound for March Madness?  (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)

Colgate has had the tougher schedule, but you can also say that about all but three other teams — Navy’s average opponent NET rank is 362nd out of 365. Colgate faced off against Michigan State, Illinois and Florida on the road in non-conference play — all Quad 1 matchups — and has played five Quad 3 games, as well, winning against Fordham and Harvard. Colgate and Navy have not played each other yet, and have two games scheduled in February — with seeding being so important in the conference tournament given the sheer volume of byes, it’s going to be key for one of the two teams to secure the top of the standings in the next couple of weeks of head-to-head play.

Patriot League - Women’s College Basketball

Leaders:

• Points Per Game: Zanai Barnett-Gay, Navy, 17.0
• Rebounds Per Game: Charlotte Tuhy, American, 10.9
• Assists Per Game: Zanai Barnett-Gay, Navy, 4.2
• Steals Per Game: Zanai Barnett-Gay, Navy, 2.7
• Blocks Per Game: Anete Adler, Boston University, 1.6

Things are a little more competitive in the women’s portion of the Patriot League, as four of the teams are in the top-200, and two in the top-120. Navy is 12-1 and at the top of the standings, but comes in at 120th in NET, compared to Army’s 118th — Army is 10-3 and in second, however. Unlike with the men’s standings, things are a little closer at the top overall. Both Lehigh and Holy Cross are 9-4 and in third, and they are also the next two by NET (190th and 173rd, respectively). Loyola Maryland (7-6) and Bucknell (5-8) are in line for the last two byes to the quarterfinals of the Patriot League tournament, but American and Lafayette are both 4-9 and not far behind the Bison. Boston University (3-10) and Colgate (2-11) bring up the rear.

Lehigh is fascinating, as it has the best Offensive Rating in the conference at 94.10 points per 100 possessions, but abysmal defense: the Mountain Hawks are 299th in Defensive Rating, at 101.89 points per 100 possessions. Just three teams are worse in the Patriot League, and they are the bottom ones in the conference. Holy Cross has the best defense of the bunch, at 90.29 per 100, but the offense doesn’t measure up. Navy is on top of the Patriot League for a reason, in that its offense isn’t particularly special and neither is its defense, but it does at least score more than it allows, resulting in the top adjusted Net Rating in the conference, 0.53.

Navy’s success should be credited to more than just one player, but junior guard Zanai Barnett-Gay is arguably the best in the whole conference, so her presence is felt each game. She leads the Patriot League in points, assists and steals per game, and is also pulling down 8.7 rebounds per. She’s second in Player Efficiency Rating (PER, 29.7) in the conference, behind Loyola Maryland’s Lex Therien by less than a point. Army has the combo of juniors Kya Smith (28.3 PER, third) and Camryn Tade (24.8, fifth), while Navy has three of the top 20 players helping it to the top: sophomore guard Julianna Almeida (16.5) and freshman guard Zoe Mesuch (16.0).

Shout out to two players here whose teams are unlikely to reach the national stage this March, but still merit mention here: BU’s 6-foot-5 senior center, Anete Adler, and American’s freshman forward Charlotte Tuhy. Adler leads the conference in blocks, but she’s also pulling down 6.2 rebounds and scoring 13.8 points per game on 48.4% shooting. Adler ranks fourth in the Patriot League in PER at 25.8, and leads in usage percentage. Tuhy, meanwhile, leads the conference in rebounds per game, and has at least 10 rebounds — and as many as 22 — in 15 of her 24 games. In six of those contests, Tuhy grabbed at least 15 boards. She’s averaging 11.4 rebounds per game in conference play; that’s some freshman season.