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Saturday Rooting Interest

By Tim Riordan

Current MAC Seeding

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

Buffalo took care of their end this week. By sweeping Ball State and Kent State the Bulls moved into 3rd place overall in the MAC, and removed a tiebreaker win from each of the schools. The last tie breaker UB has to worry about is the 0-1 record against NIU.

If UB wins out, that a big ask, they would finish no worse than second in the conference, in reality they would probably win the regular season title. But with Bowling Green and Akron on the docket UB would do well to finish 3-1 the rest of the way.

Akron and Bowling Green have one game remaining, which looks to be the one that will determine the regular season champion.

Buffalo's formula is pretty simple, win the game they should (Ohio and Miami) and UB finishes, at worst, 11-7 on the season and in 3rd or fourth place (with potential tie breaking scenarios to play out).

With Buffalo surging NIU, at 8-5, cannot trip up. They have the tie breaker with Buffalo but they also have a pretty soft schedule in front of them. EMU, WMU, CMU, Toledo, and Ball State are all teams in bottom two thirds of the conference.

Kent is a half game behind Ball State and CMU is starting to fall off the pace. Ironically if UB ends up in a multi team tie they want CMU in the mix as the Bulls went 2-0 against the chips.

Todayes Games (Rooting Interest and Lines)

EMU at Ball State (BSU -6) - EMU started conference play something awful but have been a very strong team of late. A win by the Eagles would put BSU, like Kent, two games behind the Bulls.

Toledo at Western - Who cares... Aside from being down the line tie breakers neither is a factor right now

Miami at Akron (Akron -13) - UB can still catch Akron, if they lose to Miami and Buffalo beats them in the next game than the two teams would go into the last week tied (and Buffalo would hold a 2-0 tie breaker).

Ohio at Bowling Green (BGSU -5) - Exactly the same as Akron. Buffalo is two games behind the Falcons and Bowling Green and Buffalo meet to end the year.

CMU at NIU ( NIU -4) - Buffalo needs to finish ahead of NIU because of the tie breaker, and a strong CMU would bode well for Buffalo in a multi team tie because of UB’s 2-0 record against them this year.

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