Greg Miller of WPSD Local 6 is the RTC correspondent for the MAC and OVC Conferences.
MAC Standings as of January 12:
EAST CONF. W-LOVERALL W-L
Miami (OH) 1-0 8-5
Bowling Green 1-0 8-6
Ohio 1-0 8-6
Buffalo 0-1 8-5
Akron 0-1 8-6
Kent State 0-1 7-8
WESTCONF. W-LOVERALL W-L
Ball State 1-0 6-7
Northern Illinois 1-0 5-8
Western Michigan 1-0 4-10
Central Michigan 0-1 3-10
Eastern Michigan 0-1 2-13
Toledo 0-1 2-13
Since we’ve last talked, the MAC has officially tipped off conference play. But before we dive into that, let’s look back at how the league ended non-conference play.
Greg Miller of WPSD Local 6 is the RTC correspondent for the OVC andMAC Conferences.
As 2008 winds down, the MAC is looking more and more like a one-bid league (again).
The league still has yet to beat a ranked team and is 0-17 against the BCS leagues (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big XII, SEC, Big East & ACC).
If there is any good news, despite their stuggles the league still has four teams in the RPI’s top 100; #20 Miami, #85 Buffalo, #88 Bowling Green, #98 Akron.
Unfortunately a deeper look into the numbers shows us there are only two teams that falls in between #100 and #200 (#103 Ohio & #147 Ball State).
The rest of the league falls at #229 or worse.
As expected the East is king in the MAC with five of their six teams in the top 103. The only team outside the top 103 is Kent State, a pre-season favorite. The Flash have played a weak schedule, but should still be a factor come conference play.
Strangely enough, the league is ranked #17 in the RPI and has a #7 strength of schedule ranking. Too bad they don’t have many wins over the strong part of that schedule.
Greg Miller of WPSD Local 6 is the RTC correspondent for the OVC and MAC Conferences.
Reason #182 of “Why the MAC is a one-bid league”: Record vs. BCS opponents in 2008 is 0-14.
That’s right. Thrrough November and very early December, the MAC is a robust 0-14 against teams from the BCS leagues. In fact, their overall non-conference record is a very unimpressive 33-44. The league is having a very hard time picking up big out-of-conference wins. They’ve had some near misses, but those don’t really count come March. A more telling stat, is the MAC is a somewhat impressive 15-7 at home in the non-conference. That only makes their road record of 13-25 even more disturbing. Again, this league needs to do a better job of getting home games in the non-conference. If they can somehow make this happen, you’ll see these records improve and quite possibly see an upset of a BCS team or two. The league did pull off some eye-opening wins the past two weeks.
Greg Miller of WPSD Local 6 is the RTC correspondent for the MAC.
Like most MAC pre-conference seasons, the majority of the league spent the first two weeks beating up on the Sisters of the Worthless Miracle. But there were some MAC teams that took the time to play the big boys with mixed results.
As always, Miami’s schedule is murderer’s row. The Redhawks first six games are on the road, including the 2K Coaches v Cancer Classic at UCLA. Miami gave the #4 ranked Bruins all they could handle before falling 64-59. Michael Bramos (MAC Player of the Year candidate) scored 22 points to surpass the 1000-point mark in his career. The Redhawks left Pauley Pavilion feeling pretty good about themselves after the near-upset. Unfortunately that feeling didn’t last long. Just four days later, the Redhawks were humbled at #6 Pitt 82-53. Bramos had just two points in this loss. Miami was within three early in the second half before the much more physical Panthers just took over. The gauntlet continues for Miami the next two weeks. Road games at Wright State, Xavier and Temple loom. This early season schedule should, without question, have the Redhawks ready to compete in the MAC.
Western Michigan is supposed to challenge in the MAC West. The Broncos’ first three games this year were minor disappointments. They lost to TCU by four, Hofstra by three in OT and then handed SIU-Edwardsville their first-ever division one victory by 11. Not the start the Broncs were hoping for. A silver-lining was David Kool. He averaged over 24 points in those three losses. But it’s obvious, he’s going to need help if WMU is going to be a serious MAC title contender. They did fare better with a 13-point win over Detroit. Road games at talented Sam Houston State and VCU the next two weeks will tell us a lot about this team.
Eastern Michigan suffered a serious setback before the season even started. Senior point guard and pre-season All-MAC performer Carlos Medlock was lost for the season with a broken foot. It’s the same foot he broke during the 2006-07 season. He’ll apply for a medical hardship, but that won’t help the Eagles this year. EMU had high hopes for their first winning season in a long time. Medlock’s departure could hurt those chances. His absence was felt in their blowout loss to Purdue where the EMU point guards combined for 13 turnovers. Eastern would never had beaten Purdue with Medlock, but he certainly was missed. EMU did bounce back nicely with a near upset of Georgia, losing 61-60 after leading by double-digits in the second half. Not sure what this says about Georgia, but it’s certainly a confidence boost for EMU.
Toledo’s dance with the big boys was anything but memorable. The Rockets were rocked by Florida 80-58 and stomped by Xavier 81-65. Good news, Tyrone Kent smoked the Muskies for 37 in the loss.
Northern Illinois is supposed to bring up the rear again this year in the MAC. But a sign of life was found in a win over Missouri Valley foe Indiana State. The Sycamores ain’t exactly SIU or Creighton, but it’s still a nice win for Ricardo Patton’s club.
Ohio, as expected, easliy won their opener over William & Mary. Jerome Tillman picked up where he left off last year notching his sixth straight double-double. Tillman is a serious Player of The Year candidate in the MAC.
Kent, a favorite in the MAC East with Ohio and Miami, is 2-0 under new head coach Geno Ford. They picked up an impressive road win against St. Louis and head coach Rick Majerus 76-74 in overtime. Reigning MAC Player of the Year Al Fisher was tremendous in the win. Fisher tallied 35 points, including 16 of Kent’s 17 overtime points. Oh, and he hit the game-winning layup with less than :02 left. No word on whether he drove the team bus home too.
The MAC has some big games to make a name for themselves the next two weeks, including match-ups with powerhouses like Kansas, Connecticut, Illinois and Marquette. Here are some games to keep an eye on these next two weeks:
Bowling Green at Ohio State (11/24)
Kent State at the South Padre Invitational (starting vs. Illinois 11/28)
News & Notes. One piece of news worth reporting tonight. The NCAA denied USC transfer Alex Stepheson’s (from UNC) request to waive the requirement that he sit out this season. He petitioned to the NCAA based on the poor health of his father (similar to Tyler Smith at Tennessee last year), but the powers-that-be decided against him. This is a fairly big loss to Tim Floyd’s Trojans, but could we get some clarity and transparency from the NCAA on how these decisions are made?
Game of the Night.Kent St. 76, St. Louis 74 (OT). Tonight we check in on our good friend and epicurean Rick Majerus at St. Louis. Last we saw Majerus he was busily putting together some of the ugliest games in college basketball history. We hoped better for one of the seemingly nicest guys in the game this season. So far, we’re not sure things are working out much better. The Billikens scored 48 pts in a win against Missouri-St. Louis in their opener, but KSU’s Al Fisher ensured that Majerus’ team wouldn’t reach 2-0. Fisher scored 16 of his team’s 17 pts in the overtime period, including the game winner with 2.1 seconds remaining. He finished with 35/5 stls.
Upset of the Night.Mercer 78, Auburn 74. Are there any good teams in the SEC other than Tennessee? Granted, we didn’t expect much from Auburn this year, but for the second time in four days, Mercer has gone into an SEC gym in Alabama and pulled off a win (Mercer 72, Alabama 69). At this point, Mercer could lay a reasonable claim to being the best team in the SEC West. The difference in this game? Mercer outrebounded Auburn 36 to 18. Yep, you read that right. An A-Sun team with a front line that goes 6’6, 6’6, and 6’8 absolutely WHIPPED an SEC team on the boards. Heart, much?
Near-Upset of the Night. Michigan St. 70, IPFW 59. With 10:47 left in the second half, the score was IPFW 45-44 (what is it with Indiana and these infernal acronym schools???). A 13-0 MSU run over the next five minutes salted away the game for the Spartans. Somehow IPFW convinced Izzo to come to their place, and he almost seriously regretted it tonight. Raymar Morgan (22/6) led the way for MSU, who did not shoot the ball well (43% FG; 27% 3FG), and didn’t really defend all that well either (IPFW shot 46%). Props to former Hoosier Dane Fife’s team for throwing a mild scare into a top ten team.
Other Games of Mild Interest.
Wake Forest 120, UNC-Wilmington 88. Well, we know Wake can score (214 pts in two games). But can they defend (allowed 48% tonight)? Jeff Teague had 31, James Johnson 25, and AFA 11/12/5 assts in a blowout win.
Villanova 77, Niagara 62. Scottie Reynolds shook off a poor shooting night (4-14) by making almost all of his FTs (9-10) to help Villanova hold off a team that just wouldn’t go away. Corey Fisher added 15/6.
Butler 64, Ball St. 55. Butler’s Matt Howard contributed 15/6 in a typical home win for the Bulldogs, who are holding opponents to 35% shooting so far this season.
On Tap Thursday (all times EST). Sigh… another bunch of games we can’t wach b/c they’re on the U.
Virginia Tech (-10.5) v. Fairfield (ESPNU) – 11am (PR Tipoff)
Xavier (-4) v. Missouri (ESPNU) – 1pm (PR Tipoff)
Memphis (-21.5) v. UT-Chattanooga – 4:30pm (PR Tipoff)
Duke (-12.5) v. S. Illinois (ESPN2 & 360) – 7pm (CvC)
USC (-8) v. Seton Hall (ESPNU) – 7pm (PR Tipoff)
Florida v. S. Utah (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
Oklahoma St. (-7.5) v. Tulsa (ESPN FC & 360) – 8pm
So we figure we’ll be done with these conference primers by Christmas 2008 Thanksgiving, which is about the time most people start keeping an eye on college hoops anyway. In the meantime, we thought we’d take a moment to recap the seventeen single bid conferences we’ve already reviewed. Keep in mind, our definition of a single bid league is a conference that does not regularly compete for multiple NCAA bids (even if they occasionally get multiple bids).
Some brief Single Bid Conference superlatives while we’re at this point:
Best Team. Davidson (#9 Seed NCAA)– this team has a shot at the Sweet 16 this year
Possible Spoiler. Louisiana-Monroe (Sun Belt) – everyone loves WKU in the Sun Belt, but ULM has an excellent team returning
Low Major All-Americans.
Stephen Curry (Davidson) – POY
Bo McCalebb (New Orleans)
Kyle Hines (UNC-Greensboro)
Jason Thompson (Rider)
Alex Harris (UCSB)
Hon. Mention – Courtney Pigram (ETSU), Arizona Reid (High Point), Courtney Lee (W. Kentucky), Tim Pollitz (Miami (OH))
Conference We Wish Were on TV More Often. America East. We dunno why, other than we’ve enjoyed watching teams like Albany, Vermont and BU over the past few years. Seems like a fun conference.
Conference We Wish Would Re-Organize (or Implode).Sun Belt. Despite a long and proud history, there are simply too many teams (13) located in too many places (from Denver to Miami). This conference has lost its bearings.
Conference Champ You Can Count on to Cover the Spread in NCAA Tourney 08 – Big West. Although Ivy league champs tend to stay close, Las Vegas knows that, so we like the Big West instead, where teams not named Long Beach St. have lost by an average of only 7 pts during the 2000s.
Conference Champ You Can Count on to NOT Cover the Spread in NCAA Tourney 08 – Summit. In its last nine first round games, the Summit champ has lost by an average of 22 pts.
And here’s how our Consensus Conference Picks are shaping up (RTC choice in red):
Since last time, we added the CBS Sportsline picks as well as the conference media days selections for each league. We had three more leagues came on with a full consensus (Patriot – Holy Cross; Sun Belt – W. Kentucky; Southern – Davidson) to join the OVC (Austin Peay), while the Big Sky (Montana) was only one vote short. The Big West (UCSB) and MAC (Kent St.) were solidly in one team’s corner, while the Summit (IUPUI) and Ivy (Cornell) weren’t far behind. We’re still not buying that Ivy selection of Cornell, though.
WYN2K. We went back and forth on where to rank the MAC because conveniently pigeonholing this league into low- or mid-major status is very difficult to do. Historically, the league hasn’t been more than a one-bid league (since 1985 the MAC has received two NCAA bids only five times), but it has consistently done well with the teams that it puts into March Madness, ranking among the top five conferences in terms of exceeding its expected number of NCAA wins (aka overachieving). Using historical measures of success by seed, the MAC (as an average #12.0 seed) should have won only 12.04 NCAA Tournament games over the last 23 years – instead it has won fifteen. So given this dichotomy in its character, we started looking at recent history to gain a deeper understanding of where the MAC should fall on the ladder. We’re probably going to upset the MAC folks out there, but ultimately we were swayed by the fact that the league has been a one-bid league with no first round wins (losing by an average of 8.8 pts) over the last four seasons (despite having a winning record of 192-186 against OOC opponents the last three years). That was enough to convince us to keep the MAC (for now) at the top of the low majors. But it was a very close call.
Predicted Champion. Kent St. (#12 seed NCAA). The Golden Flashes are our choice to win the MAC this year (again, shamelessly unoriginal). But what’s not to like with this team? They return all five starters from a team that went 12-4 in conference last year, and a program under the tutelage of Jim Christian who has never had an under-20 win season at the school (KSU has had nine straight 20 win seasons). No one player stands out offensively on this defensive-minded club (#22 nationally in defensive efficiency last year), but 6’7 forward Haminn Quaintance is the man shoring up the team D from the inside (#15 in stl% and #33 in blk% nationally). Kent St. has a difficult, but not insane (see: Miami (OH) for that), nonconference schedule, featuring games against mid-majors Xavier, St. Louis and George Mason at home, while going to Chapel Hill in early January to play UNC.
Others Considered. We like Western Michigan to win the West Division, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we think they’re the second-best team in the conference. Like Kent St., the Broncos also return all five starters, but the 2007 version of WMU simply (16-16) wasn’t as good as Kent St. (21-11). Their ultimate destiny may depend on the offseason development of the most excellently-named guard David Kool, last year’s MAC FrOY, a player who seems to do a little bit of everything. Last year’s miraculous champion Miami (OH) was also considered simply because they have Charlie Coles still at the helm and you know you’re going to get a hardnosed defensive team (#28 nationally in eFG% defense; MU didn’t allow a single opponent to score 70 pts last seaon) that tests itself with an extremely tough nonconference schedule every year – this year’s includes five NCAA teams, one NIT team + Cincinnati on the road. Akron getting left out of both the NCAA and the NIT last year despite 26 wins has to still sting coach Keith Dambrot. But if he’s to become vindicated with a MAC championship this year, he’ll have to do so without conference POY (and former Lebron HS teammates) Romeo Travis and team leader PG Dru Joyce. Can the Zips find point guard play to support another run? They do return five of the top 500 most efficient offensive players in the country (contributing to a #12 raw offensive efficiency), so there is a fair chance of another great season. Another team that is probably still a year away from competing for the MAC title but is worth watching is Central Michigan. CMU went from 4-24 in 2006 to 13-18 in 2007, and the pieces are beginning to align for former UCLA assistant coach and current head man Ernie Ziegler. He returns four starters including Giordan Watson, the leading returning scorer (18.8 ppg) in the MAC this season. Last year’s league regular season champ, Toledo, lost its top three scorers and is expected to drop off somewhat despite returning the league’s DPOY Kashif Payne.
Games to Watch. The MAC has a fair number of televised games this year, so you can actually watch some of these, as opposed to watching for them. Keep in mind the unbalanced sixteen-game schedule.
Kent St. @ Miami (OH) (01.17.08) & Miami (OH) @ Kent St. (03.04.08)
Central Michigan @ Western Michigan (01.22.08) ESPNU & Western Michigan @ Central Michigan (03.04.08)
ESPNU Bracketbusters (02.23.08)
MAC Championship Game (03.15.08) ESPN2
RPI Booster Games. Like the Big West, the MAC doesn’t play a lot of BCS teams, largely because they want home-and-homes and the higher profile schools aren’t willing to risk a loss when they get a Southland or Sun Belt team to take the one-game lump payment along with their whipping. Last year the league was 4-25 (.138) against BCS teams, and there are 21 such games on the schedule this year (along with quite a few mid-major games). Oh, and who does Ohio U. know at ESPN – they’re scheduled to be on the family of networks at least nine times this year!
New Mexico St. @ Ohio (11.09.07) ESPN FC
Western Michigan @ Oregon (11.10.07) ESPN FC
Vanderbilt @ Toledo (11.13.07)
Davidson @ Western Michigan (11.21.07)
Central Michigan @ Minnesota (11.24.07) ESPN 360
Eastern Michigan @ Notre Dame (12.01.07)
Miami (OH) @ Louisville (12.01.07) ESPN FC
Ohio @ Kansas (12.15.07) ESPN2
Western Michigan @ S. Illinois (12.18.07)
Kent St. @ UNC (01.02.08) ESPN
Odds of Multiple NCAA Bids. There’s always a reasonable shot for the MAC to get multiple bids, but we wouldn’t call those odds good this year. Looking at what happened to Akron last year suggests that the only team that would have a shot at an at-large would be Miami (OH) if they had a great record and lost in the conference tournament.
Neat-o Stat. There are three new and somewhat accomplished coaches coming into the MAC this season – Ricardo Patton (Northern Illinois), formerly of Colorado where he took the Buffs to 2 NCAAs and 4 NITs in eleven seasons; Louis Orr (Bowling Green), formerly of Seton Hall where he took the Pirates to 2 NCAAs and 1 NIT in five seasons; and Billy Taylor (Ball St.), formerly of Lehigh who is taking over from the troubled tenure of Ronny Thompson there.
64/65-Team Era. As we alluded to above, the MAC can make a reasonable case for inclusion into the mid-major category (we define a mid-major conference as one that consistently competes for and receives at-large NCAA bids, minus the BCS conferences). Despite overachieving when MAC teams make the NCAA Tourney with four teams making the Sweet 16 or better (Kent St. in 2002), it still only has had five years of multiple bids (two each time – 1985, 1986, 1995, 1998, 1999) in this era. And as you can see, none have occurred during the 2000s. For now, let’s enjoy the ending of last year’s MAC Championship game. Bedlam.
Final Thought. The conference is very balanced, as five different programs have tasted the NCAA over the last five years, and only twice has a school had the good fortune to go B2B in winning the conference crown (Ball St. – 1989 & 1990; Kent St. – 2001 & 2002). So it should be no surprise if someone besides Miami (OH) steps up and takes the title this year. Befitting a conference that has quality depth, we see no fewer than six teams that could make a legitimate run at the conference championship, and a couple more who could easily act the role of spoilers. As always, the MAC plays quality basketball and is worth catching when you get a chance.
