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thoughts?

http://www.mac-sports.com/News/tabid/96 ... ormat.aspx

It seems to me that the MAC is sick is tired of having the #5 and #6 seeds winning the tournament, as they have so many times in recent years and decided to penalize any teams that don't finish in the top 4 by making them have to win 5 games to make the title game.

The major criticism I have of this plan is the following. Right now, the two division winners are seeded #1 and #2. But we all know that the West division in men's basketball is a joke, and usually the #3 and #4 seeds are better than the #2 as a result. I would hope that the MAC changes this and starts seeding totally by record, because otherwise that's REALLY not fair to the teams in the East division, to have to play potentially 4 or 5 games to reach the finals when the winner of the weak West only has to win twice to reach the NCAAs.

On the other hand, this almost certainly helps our women's team, because when was the last time BG was seeded lower than #2 in the MAC? I honestly can't remember back that far...

Awesome! Anything to increase the importance of the regular season I am all for! The Mac season is basically just for fun until the tourney starts. Great idea to give the higher seeds a bigger advantage.

I do somewhat agree with 24 though...wish it was seeded on best record rather than by division.

WOW! The #1 or #2 seed only needs to win two games and it goes to the NCAA Tournament! This makes the seeding crazy important now.

I've seen a lot of smaller conferences move to this format where the top 2 seeds get a double bye (or in this case triple bye). thought those are usually eight team tournaments, interested to see how this format works with 12 teams

I like it. First round at campus sites and top seeds have abetter chance of getting to the NCAA. I'd prefer no divisions in B-ball but while we have them, I'm ok with the two division winners being #1 and #2.

Unless I missed something, it wasn't very clear to me exactly how the #1 & #2 seeds were going to be determined now. Will it be division winners or the two best records? In this format, I would MUCH prefer it to be decided by the two best records, especially if they are only needing to win two games to win the tournament if seeded in that position. If the point of this new tournament structure is to try and channel the top teams through it, then it would only make sense for it to be by record. But this is the MAC, so who knows. If it happens to work out that the division winners do indeed have the best records, then perfect. But if say it is done by division, for example, and Kent State goes 12-4 in the East for the #1 seed and BG goes 11-5 for second in the East but Ball State gets the #2 seed because it goes 8-8 for first place in the West, it would be a crime IMO.

Here’s my thought on this tournament format. Because of the MAC’s inability to get multiple bids into the NCAA Tournament, I like this format but only if the top two teams are decided by best records. It would not only reward the top teams for a good regular season (and make it matter that much more), but would also help improve their chances at getting to the Big Dance. If the MAC actually got multiple bids (which it obviously wasn’t anymore), I would say I don’t like it. The thing is, there wasn’t anything wrong IMO with the way the MAC Tournament was set up prior to this change "IF" the MAC was able to manage to still get two teams into the NCAA Tournament if there was an upset. I loved te upsets (unless it was us being upset). But the fact was, the MAC didn’t get those multiple bids. That said, I guess I like the change from the standpoint of the MAC as a whole.

I like this change. IMO this addresses the issue of "weighting" the regular season more than a end of year tourney run. This is the right move for our one-bid conference. I think of the McLeod Matella team that lost to Kent 3 times in one year and was ROBBED of a NCAA bid. I think reducing the games from 3 to 2 to win the tourney for a top seed is good for that scenario as maybe a fresher set of legs will get it done. Bravo MAC

Apparently you didn't read. The second paragraph says the following:

Recently approved by the Conference’s Council of Director of Athletics, the new format will seed both tournaments by rewarding the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds with a bye into the semifinal round, while the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will receive a bye to the quarterfinal round. Seeding will be determined by winning percentage, regardless of division.

In other words, seeds 1-4 could all be west or all be east.

footballguy51 wrote:Apparently you didn't read. The second paragraph says the following:

Recently approved by the Conference’s Council of Director of Athletics, the new format will seed both tournaments by rewarding the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds with a bye into the semifinal round, while the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will receive a bye to the quarterfinal round. Seeding will be determined by winning percentage, regardless of division.

In other words, seeds 1-4 could all be west or all be east.

I like that, thanks for the info.