2009 MAAC men's basketball tournament explained

The 2009 MAAC men's basketball tournament was an NCAA college basketball tournament held at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York on March 6–9, 2009, to decide the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion. The winner, Siena advanced to the 2009 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, a 65-team event to decide the national champion of Division I college basketball. Siena received a No. 9 seed and upset No. 8 seed Ohio State 74–72 in double overtime, then were defeated by No. 1 seed Louisville 79–72 in the second round.

Seeds

All 10 teams in the conference participated in the Tournament. The top six teams received byes to the quarterfinals. Teams were seeded by record within the conference, with a tiebreaker system to seed teams with identical conference records.

Seed	School	Conference	Tiebreaker	Tiebreaker 2
1	Siena	16–2
2	Niagara	14–4
3	Rider	12–6
4	Manhattan	9–9	1–1 vs Fairfield	1–1 vs Rider
5	Fairfield	9–9	1–1 vs Manhattan	0–2 vs Rider
6	Saint Peter's	8–10
7	Iona	7–11	1–1 vs Loyola	1–1 vs Niagara
8	Loyola (MD)	7–11	1–1 vs Iona	0–2 vs Niagara
9	Canisius	4–14	2–0 vs Marist
10	Marist	4–14	0–2 vs Canisius

Schedule

Session	Game	Time*	Matchup#	Score	Television
First round – Friday, March 6
1	1	7:30 pm	No. 8 Loyola vs No. 9 Canisius	68–74	MAAC-TV
	2	9:30 pm	No. 7 Iona vs No. 10 Marist	40–43
Quarterfinals – Saturday, March 7
2	3	2:30 pm	No. 4 Manhattan vs No. 5 Fairfield	61–68	MSG2
	4	5:00 pm	No. 1 Siena vs No. 9 Canisius	77–52	MSG
Quarterfinals – Saturday, March 7
3	5	7:30 pm	No. 2 Niagara vs No. 10 Marist	79–50	MSG+
	6	10:00 pm	No. 3 Rider vs No. 6 Saint Peter's	67–58	MSG2
Semifinals – Sunday, March 8
4	7	6:00 pm	No. 1 Siena vs No. 5 Fairfield	80–65	MSG2
	8	8:30 pm	No. 2 Niagara vs No. 3 Rider	93–89 2OT	MSG+
Championship – Monday, March 9
5	9	9:00 pm	No. 1 Siena vs No. 2 Niagara	77–70	ESPN2
Game times in ET. #-Rankings denote tournament seeding.