If the MAC Tournament Started Today

Buffalo edged out Central Michigan and Toledo just survived Northern Illinois. Thus it was the status quo of the MAC was maintained yet another Tuesday night.

The Bulls, at 10-1, lead Toledo by a single game. After them half the conference is bundled up at either 6-5 or 5-6.

But despite the big lead both UB and Toledo have looked pretty mortal in recent weeks. UB went from winning games by double digits to surviving games with 5-8 points wins. Toledo, similarly, has stumbled and started to be pushed by the opposition.

But good teams win when the “chips” are down and Buffalo and Toledo are on a pace to be the most dominant pair of division leaders in the conference for quite some time.

With seven games left in conference play UB leads Miami and Kent by 4 games, with Kent holding a tiebreaker over UB. In the West Toledo holds a 3 game lead over Western Michigan and Ball State, with the Cardinals holding a tie breaker over the Rockets.

Tiebreakers aside, UB’s likely magic number for winning the division and/or clinching a first round bye is three games.

Whats going to fun to watch, as the season progresses, is the hunt for those last two byes into Cleveland. The #2 seed and the #8 seed are separated by exactly one game, and every time it looks like someone is going to surge out of that pack they stumble.

At the bottom of the Conference Ohio has started to show life. It’s unlikely they have enough gas to host a campus game but they pushed CMU to the limit and stomped Akron.