Watching the America East Conference tournament from the stands last weekend, UMass Lowell athletic director Dana Skinner said all he could think about was how competitive his team would have been. 

"Stony Brook is in the championship game, and we were so close against them," he said after returning from Albany. "We had a field goal to tie the game with seven seconds to go." 

That game, which took place on Jan. 18, was the first time UMass Lowell and Stony Brook had ever played each other as teams of the same conference. Stony Brook won 70-65, one of several games that came right down to the wire for the River Hawks in their first season of Division 1 basketball...