Rooting Interest This week

Current MAC Seeding

1. Bowling Green 10-3
2. Akron 9-3
3. Northern Illinois 8-5
4. Ball State 7-5 (Win Over Kent, Buffalo)
5. Kent State 7-5 (Win Over Buffalo)
6. Buffalo 7-5
7. Central Michigan 6-5 (Loss to Buffalo)

Then after that it’s a mess of teams that would need a miracle to get to the four seed. So the picture above are the teams fighting for that first round bye. The Falcons are very well positioned with five games left. Assuming Bowling Green beats Ohio and Miami they are at 12 wins and need to beat only Buffalo, Akron, or Kent to clinch a top four spot.

Akron’s also in pretty good shape. They have WMU, Ohio. and Miami left which would get them to 12 wins. Then you have Bowling Green, Buffalo, and a season closing home game versus Kent.

That Kent game may very well decide the fate of both teams in the MAC tournament.

NIU at 8-5 is getting into the edge of the danger zone but they have the easiest schedule remaining of teams in the top 7 right now. EMU, WMU, CMU, Toledo, and Ball State.

Then we hit the mess, which will start to get sorted tonight.

UB, Kent, and Ball State are all tied, with CMU lagging a half game behind. Buffalo is in the unenviable position of being on the wrong side of the tiebreakers to both Ball State and Kent. This makes the next two games, against Ball State and Kent, the most important of the season for Buffalo.

Winning out would not only put UB all alone in 4th, but nullify the tie breaker advantage each team holds in head to head.

Tonight’s Games (Rooting Interest and Lines)

Ball State at Buffalo (UB -4.5) —> Duh, Buffalo

WMU vs Akron (Akron -8.0) —> Root for WMU, but I’m not counting on an Akron Collapse

EMU vs Kent State (Kent -2.5) —> Home game for EMU and they can up and play fantastic at times.

CMU at Ohio (Ohio -4.0) —> Ohio’s on the upsurge and CMU is floundering. This may be the game that drop the chips from a realistic shot at the top four seeds.