Syracuse, N.Y. -- Just five months after Le Moyne College announced that it was moving up to Division I and joining the Northeast Conference, a pair of potential rivals announced they were leaving the league after the current season.
Merrimack College and Sacred Heart University announced on Monday that they will leave the NEC and join the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference next season. Their decision puts four of the NEC’s automatic NCAA tournament bids into jeopardy, including the critical sports of men’s and women’s basketball.
The moves were announced one day before the league will hold its annual basketball media day in Newark, New Jersey.
“I’d love to say it was unexpected, but we all know that it’s a dynamic time in college sports,” Le Moyne athletic director Bob Beretta told syracuse.com. “We know there’s a seismic shift going on. We’re not immune to it.”
Beretta said he does not expect Le Moyne’s current athletes to bear the brunt of the departures.
Le Moyne’s athletes are already not permitted to participate in NCAA championships during an NCAA-mandated four-year transition to Division I that ends prior to the 2027-28 season. Beretta said he expects the NEC to have shored up its automatic bids at that point.
The departure of the two schools leaves the NEC with just five full Division I members in men’s and women’s basketball. Two other schools, Le Moyne and Stonehill College, are currently transitioning into Division I.
NCAA rules require leagues to have at least seven full Division I members to earn an automatic bid in basketball. Beretta said there is a two-year grace period for leagues that fall below seven, but they must have six teams to take advantage of that period.
That means in order to avoid losing its automatic bid in basketball until Stonehill is a full Division I member in 2026-27, the NEC will have to add another Division I team. That would mean poaching a school from another league, a potential challenge given the NEC’s status as a steppingstone, or adding Chicago State, the country’s only independent Division I program in basketball.
Chicago State left the Western Athletic Conference to go independent in 2022. It had joined the WAC in 2013, leaving the defunct Great West Conference.
“The NEC Council of Presidents continues to be actively engaged in discussions regarding membership expansion and we are focused on the prospects that lie ahead,” NEC commissioner Noreen Morris said in a statement. “Change can be challenging but it also opens doors to new opportunities, and we are committed to forging a strong and promising future for the Northeast Conference.”
Morris added she was disappointed with the two departures.
The league can also add more schools from the Division II level to beef up its numbers over the long-haul. Like Stonehill and Le Moyne, they wouldn’t count toward the minimum number of teams until they go through a four-year NCAA transition process.
As it currently stands, the long-term members of the NEC include Le Moyne, Stonehill, Central Connecticut State, Fairleigh Dickinson, Long Island University, Saint Francis and Wagner.
The University of New Haven is one Division II school in the Northeast that has already announced that it would like to join a Division I conference.
“This league has always had to be resilient,” Beretta said. “They’ve always had to adjust and adept, and they always have. I believe that we are resilient enough to come out on the other side.”
Along with basketball, the NEC’s automatic bids in men’s lacrosse and men’s volleyball are also complicated by the departure. Le Moyne does not compete in men’s volleyball, but men’s lacrosse is the school’s flagship athletic program.
The NEC recently announced it would sponsor men’s lacrosse in 2024-25 with a conference of six full Division I members and Le Moyne. Two of those schools were Merrimack and Sacred Heart.
The creation of the conference, announced on Oct. 12, seemed to ensure that the Le Moyne men’s lacrosse program would have a postseason opportunity in 2025.
The NEC played lacrosse in 2022. It did not sponsor the sport in 2023.
Over the past year, Norris brokered agreements with a pair of affiliate schools, Virginia Military Institute and Detroit-Mercy, to make the league eligible for an automatic bid in 2025.
Now the NEC will need to add two more men’s lacrosse programs to reach the threshold of six schools to earn an automatic NCAA tournament bid. It’s unclear how the NEC would handle 2025 if the league doesn’t have those teams inplace in 2025.
The league will need to add one more full-time member to earn an automatic bid in 2028, when Le Moyne is eligible to be counted and compete in the NCAA tournament.
Beretta acknowledged that the potential loss of the league’s automatic bid in basketball has led to some doomsday predictions about the conference’s future on social media. He said he doesn’t believe the NEC’s reality is that dire.
He said he believes the transitioning members shore up the league’s future and that Norris’ experience cobbling together solutions shows she’ll find ways to secure automatic bids.
“I think the league is well-situated for the long-term,” Beretta said. “There are some short-term challenges. It’s a relationship business and the commissioner is gifted in relationships. We have full confidence in her finding a solution.
“I think that there is solidarity among the group. I think the remaining institutions have similar missions and desires. I think we’ll be united behind our commissioner.”
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