Seton Hall University guard Lauren Park-Lane earned the season’s final #BIGEASTwbb Player of the Week honor for the 2021–’22 basketball season. She and her fellow Pirates are now heading into the Big East Tournament, which starts tomorrow. It’s been a good, not great, season for Seton Hall, but the team has clearly been building steam as the season progressed.
Division I teams now have post-season play in their sights. It’s been a strange and demanding season. It began on time and on schedule, but was upended when the Omicron variant led to numerous cancellations and reschedules. In January, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman told Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, “We’re doing the best we can to be competently reactive to the outbreaks.”
Here is a look at a few local teams with winning records as they head into their respective conference tournaments. In Manhattan, Columbia University has one more Ivy League game to play before heading into the Ivy League Tournament next weekend. Currently 11–2 in conference play—Columbia’s best-ever Ivy League record—the only conference team to roar louder than the Lions has been the Princeton Tigers, currently an undefeated 12–0 in Ivy League action with two games this weekend.
Manhattan College in the Bronx is 12–6 in MAAC action with two more conference games to play. The MAAC Tournament starts on Tuesday. Fellow Bronx resident, Fordham University, is 8–6 in Atlantic 10 play with its conference tournament starting today.
Over in Brooklyn, St. Francis College is having an outstanding season with a 12–5 record in NEC action. The Terriers have their final regular season conference game tonight. In Staten Island, Wagner College is also having a good season. With one conference game remaining, the Seahawks are 9-8 in NEC play. St. Francis is second in the NEC standings and Wagner is fourth. The top ranked team is Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, which has already secured the regular season title, the Knights’ first since 1993. The Northeast Conference Tournament kicks off on Monday.