PAUL WOODY COLUMN: CAA at-large bids at stake now

RICHMOND, Va. -- Hope springs eternal at the start of the college basketball season, and nowhere is hope springing more eternal or with greater expectations than the Colonial Athletic Association.

The CAA is loaded. Old Dominion returns all its starters, led by potential player of the year Gerald Lee.

Northeastern, VCU and James Madison each return four starters.

Granted, VCU's one missing starter is Eric Maynor, the conference player of the year and backup point guard for the Utah Jazz.

George Mason has two starters back and a freshman class that has great potential.

The CAA, top to bottom, is so strong that its coaches are saying this is not a one-bid league. They say the CAA is a two-bid league when the NCAA tournament selection committee gathers to pick the 65-team field.

In fact, some coaches will say the CAA could deserve three bids, maybe even four bids.

Four bids for the CAA? Maybe it's the coaches who should have to undergo drug tests instead of players.

Just kidding.

No one should doubt the strength of the CAA. There are outstanding players, excellent coaches and George Mason was, after all, in the Final Four in 2006.

But a multiple-bid conference?

That's a heady dream. That's tough work. That means CAA teams have to do some of their best work in November and December.

Once conference play begins in earnest in January, CAA teams are out of luck in terms of moving up significantly in the ratings percentage index.

The RPI is the gold standard, the list from which NCAA at-large teams are selected.

The CAA is not the ACC. If Clemson beats Duke at home, Clemson gets a bump in the RPI, even though Clemson should beat Duke at home.

Clemson and Duke are in the same conference, recruiting the same players and have the same resources, for goodness sake. But that's a topic for another day.

If the CAA teams want multiple bids, the non-conference games are of immense importance.

And give the top CAA teams credit. They're playing some "name" schools.

Old Dominion is in tournaments with Missouri, Mississippi State and the University of Richmond, which is picked to be one of the top teams in the Atlantic 10 this season.

The Monarchs also play at Dayton and at Georgetown.

VCU has home games with Oklahoma, Richmond, Nevada and Rhode Island. The Rams are at Tulane.

George Mason is at Tulane, at George Washington and has home games with Dayton and Creighton.

Northeastern plays at another mid-major power, Siena, and also has dates with Rhode Island, Providence and Wright State, a sleeper-power in the mid-major category.

James Madison played at Ohio State last night and will play at Stanford.

Ambition is not lacking among CAA teams.

The bigger question is whether success will follow. The CAA can't come up short in these non-conference games.

What usually happens is CAA teams play out-of-conference opponents tough, often taking games to the final seconds. Then, they lose.

And close does not count when the NCAA selection committee meets.

The 10-member selection committee has just four members from schools or conferences considered mid-major.

When it comes time to pick between the No. 6 team in the ACC and the No. 2 or No. 3 team in the CAA, it's much easier for the commissioner of the Big 12 and the athletic directors from UCLA, Xavier, Ohio State, Wake Forest and Connecticut to go with one of their own -- the ACC -- than one of the unknowns, the CAA.

You see, it's kind of like the banking industry. The people from power conferences see those of a similar ilk as too big to fail.

If CAA teams want to be "known" and get those multiple bids they dream of, their most important games will not be in the league tournament in March.

They will be played in November and December.

No one in the CAA can afford to stumble.
Contact Paul Woody at (804) 649-6444 or . Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/World_of_Woody