MAC Power Rankings: Week 5
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#1 Central Michigan: 'Escaping' from Buffalo with a 20-13 win keeps the Chips at a solid #1. The Chips should be worried that they are the first team this season to lose the turnover battle to the Bulls. They also have to be concerned that UB put up more than two hundred yards rushing on their defense. |
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#2 Northern Illinois: NIU clearly established themselves as the conferences number two team with an epic beat down of Western Michigan. Any question marks left over from the Idaho game are gone as they held Tim Hiller to 174 yards. Right now watching the entire body of their work they are the only team playing at the same level as CMU. |
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#3 Toledo: I almost dropped the rockets to #4 after squeaking by Ball State but I think the Card's have become a far better team than their record indicates. Toledo is now just one win away from equaling last seasons total as Tim Beckman works one of the better turn around in college football. They need to get the turnovers under control. |
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#4 Ohio: Right now the Ohio / Temple game in week 13 is looking to be the deciding game in the east division. The bobcats have not played a bad game this season (Losing close games to UConn and to Tennessee) dropping 44 on Bowling Green gives them the post position. |
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#5 Temple: Speaking of inside Track the owls avoided a letdown against EMU by completely eliminating the Eagle running game (50 total yards). Next week they head to Muncie to play a deceptively good Ball State team. |
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#6 Bowling Green: Chalk it up to growing pains, but after an impressive week one victory over Troy the Falcons have dropped four straight games, three of those games, including Ohio, were winnable contests. Their Running defense cost them at least two of their games ( Marshal and Ohio). No matter how good the Clauffence plays you are not going to win too many games giving up 200+ yards on the ground. |
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#7 Western Michigan: For a team that was supposed to rival CMU for the conference the Broncos are falling apart. They have only managed to beat Hofstra (which was close most of the game) and Miami (Who scored a season high on WMU). The loss to NIU puts them behind the eight ball in the West. |
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#8 Ball State: I really think this team is better than number eight but they need to prove it on the field. Zero wins or not the fact is that Ball State has gotten better every week this season. Its only a matter of time before they put it all together. (As a UB Fan I really hope they do it against Temple). |
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#9 Buffalo: Solid game against CMU, outside of the red zone performances that both the offense and defense offered up UB played well enough to win. This team needs to win, and needs it badly. Fortunately the GW Bulldogs come into town this week. |
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#10 Akron: It might seem unfair to put Ball State over Akron, given that Akron did not play this week, but the Cards showed more on the field against solid competition than the zips have managed this year. |
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#11 Kent State: Things are not looking good for Doug Martin, the 2-3 record is very deceiving as Kent has played their two easiest games of the year. Next in the queue? Bowling Green, EMU, and Ohio. Kent is looking at 3-5 before hitting the hardest stretch of their schedule. |
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#12 Eastern Michigan: It was hard enough not having a running game when Any Schmidt was behind center, now its fatal. Kyle McMahon played a respectable game but when you have no ground game the quarterback has to be more than respectable. |
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#13 Miami: The Redhawks are not being done any favors by their schedule (two top ten teams) but they have not played anyone, save Kent, competitively. Dysert is an improvement at QB but he needs to get the pics under control. |