Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Blog over the weekend, and an especially big thanks to everyone who took part in the live chats during games. Thanks also to everyone who sent in Pick Em entries, which gave us a fun game to play for the second straight year.

The Pick Em winner for Year 2 is Fred Sakai, who turned in a perfect ballot and edged Mike Vitale by one point for the title. If Iona had found a way to beat Marist in Friday's play-in round, Mike would have gone 9-for-9 and Fred would have come up short.

If Tyrone Lewis' miracle 3-pointer hadn't gone in off the glass with 1.7 seconds left in Sunday's semifinal, and Siena had gone on to beat Rider in the title game, the winner would have been Eric Gruber, who turned in an impressive performance in his Pick Em debut.

If Niagara had won tonight, it would have come down to a tiebreaker between Tom Cleary and defending champ Keith Connors.

The final standings are below:

1. Fred, 26
2. Mike, 25
3. Antonio, 24
4. Eric, 21
5. Tom D., 20
6. Tom C., 17
6. Keith, 17
8. Scott, 16
9. Chris, 15
10. Dan, 12
11. Felix, 8
12. Todd, 7
13. Ryan, 4
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For those who weren't with us in the live chat, my tournament ballot had the MVP who wound up winning (Kenny Hasbrouck) and four of the five all-tourmanent winners. I had Ronald Moore, Kenny Hasbrouck, Tyrone Lewis and Ryan Thompson, but I had Ryan Rossiter -- who made big play after big play in Monday's title game and finished with 16 points and a game-high 14 rebounds -- on instead of Bilal Benn, who I thought just came up too small Monday night (11 rebounds but only six points) to earn such honors.

Beagle weighed in and said he would have put Rossiter on instead of Franklin. What does everyone else think?
...

A quick summary of what the Blog will have over the next few weeks: I wish we could go full throttle with all these games the way we do with the tournament games. Unfortunately, the MAAC tournament is the only stretch of the year when I have five days to dedicate strictly to covering basketball. As of this week, I'm back to being the Assistant Sports Editor of The Trentonian, which doesn't permit a TON of time for writing, let alone blogging.

With that said, the Blog certainly isn't going away. I'll do my very best to keep up on potential postseason destinations for MAAC teams, and if Rider gets a postseason bid in a location I can get to without missing too much desk time, I'll be there. I've also got my fingers crossed, hoping Siena somehow lands in Philadelphia for the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament. If that's the case, I'll do my best to be there.

Also, since the live game chats seemed to be a big hit, I'm thinking about holding chat sessions on a regular basis just to talk MAAC hoops. I'd be happy to answer any questions folks might have, and of course, it'd also give the fans of various teams who stopped by during the tournament an opportunity to talk a little good-natured trash. If you'd be interested in at least occasionally taking part in a feature like that, leave me a comment or write me an e-mail (bdoody@trentonian.com) and let me know. If there's enough interest, we can do it a few times between now and the end of the NCAA tournament.

In the meantime, keep stopping by, keep leaving comments, and keep helping me make this a better blog. March has gotten off to an exciting start, and I'm sure there are more good games and more good discussions to come.

I don't have the actual MAAC highlight film that goes with the song, but in the absence of that video, here's the original music video of "I want it Now," the quasi-official song of this year's tournament.