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ESPN is giving very little respect to the MAC. This is what their bracket expert thinks. With UT losing last night it pretty much killed any chance for an AT large bid so now the MAC will be a one bid conference. They have Western Michigan in their bracket. Rightfully so because Western is currently #1 in the MAC. But in the ESPN bracket they have Western as the #16 seed playing the overall #1 seed Florida. Has a MAC team every been below #14?? Seriously is the MAC that little respected.

Yes.

The MAC deserves no respect. The level of play in our conference has been horrible the last few years.

The thing about WMU is, they should have lost to Ball State (just 4 wins all year) last night and needed a flurry down the stretch to send the game into overtime where they squeaked it out. Further, WMU lost to BG at home. Need I say more???

I recall several years ago when the NCAA expanded to a 64 team field, MAC officials were elated thinking the league would place two team in the tournament year in and year out from that point on. Dead wrong. The league is slowly sinking into an abyss. Huge arenas - empty. Coaching staffs seldom staying in place for more than five years. Lack of respect nationally and not much interest on the home fronts....while big brother Big Ten continues to flourish. I have been as zealous as anyone about the league over the past 40 years, but I am coming to the painful realization it is a losing battle.

zete wrote:I recall several years ago when the NCAA expanded to a 64 team field, MAC officials were elated thinking the league would place two team in the tournament year in and year out from that point on. Dead wrong. The league is slowly sinking into an abyss. Huge arenas - empty. Coaching staffs seldom staying in place for more than five years. Lack of respect nationally and not much interest on the home fronts....while big brother Big Ten continues to flourish. I have been as zealous as anyone about the league over the past 40 years, but I am coming to the painful realization it is a losing battle.

I think in 2002 when BG and Kent State played in the MAC Championship that had BG won, Kent State could have gotten an at-large bid. But that's been about he last time I felt it was really deserving IMO. But for me, I love the progress and exposure that MAC football has gotten and developed. When I was in school in the mid-1990's MAC football was getting one bowl bid and basketball had a couple at-large berths.

That said, being a BG fan, BG football has been much more fun to follow for years while BG basketball has just sucked the life out of me. In the last 20 years I have seen BG football ranked in the Top-25 in multiple years (basketball none), I have seen BG football win a MAC Championship (BG basketball none - MAC Tournament), I have seen BG football win several bowl games (BG basketball won no postseason games in the NCAA, NIT, CIT or CBI) and BG football has hosted College Gameday (basketball none). BG football has also played in many more national TV games games both home and away than BG basketball and he wins by football over BCS schools was much more publicized and recognized than the wins over similar schools in basketball. I would LOVE for BG to be good in both, but if I have to pick one, I'll take football over basketball every single time.

BGSU33 wrote:

zete wrote:I recall several years ago when the NCAA expanded to a 64 team field, MAC officials were elated thinking the league would place two team in the tournament year in and year out from that point on. Dead wrong. The league is slowly sinking into an abyss. Huge arenas - empty. Coaching staffs seldom staying in place for more than five years. Lack of respect nationally and not much interest on the home fronts....while big brother Big Ten continues to flourish. I have been as zealous as anyone about the league over the past 40 years, but I am coming to the painful realization it is a losing battle.

I think in 2002 when BG and Kent State played in the MAC Championship that had BG won, Kent State could have gotten an at-large bid. But that's been about he last time I felt it was really deserving IMO. But for me, I love the progress and exposure that MAC football has gotten and developed. When I was in school in the mid-1990's MAC football was getting one bowl bid and basketball had a couple at-large berths.

That said, being a BG fan, BG football has been much more fun to follow for years while BG basketball has just sucked the life out of me. In the last 20 years I have seen BG football ranked in the Top-25 in multiple years (basketball none), I have seen BG football win a MAC Championship (BG basketball none - MAC Tournament), I have seen BG football win several bowl games (BG basketball won no postseason games in the NCAA, NIT, CIT or CBI) and BG football has hosted College Gameday (basketball none). BG football has also played in many more national TV games games both home and away than BG basketball and he wins by football over BCS schools was much more publicized and recognized than the wins over similar schools in basketball. I would LOVE for BG to be good in both, but if I have to pick one, I'll take football over basketball every single time.

There's actually a bit of debate going on in the hockey forum over which program has done better over the past 10-15 years, hockey or men's basketball. It's actually quite hard to say, IMO, because both teams have been pretty consistently poor. Hockey at least played in a very difficult conference for most of that stretch, so that has to count for something.

Football vs men's basketball...that's not even a contest. Football has only had 3 sub-.500 seasons since 2001. They've had 3 seasons of double digit wins, a MAC Championship, several bowl wins, but I think more importantly, football has been a consistent MAC contender. Even in 2006 when the football team went 4-8, they started 3-1 in conference, and were it not for a few blown calls at Akron and a terrible missed fg against Miami, could've well made the MACC that year. They were in the mix every year from 2002 to 2005, and again from 2007 to 2009, and now again from 2012 going forward. Men's basketball has really only had two stretches where they could be considered good, from 2000 through 2002 under Dakich, and 2008 and 2009 under Orr. The rest of the period has been a disaster.

Of course, when it comes to program success at BG, nobody touches women's basketball. Rugby would be there if it was an official sanctioned sport...alas.

But I digress...I've gone a bit off topic. With regard to Toledo's men's team, they are 22-5 overall, 11-4 in MAC play, RPI 39, SOS 154. That SOS number really doesn't help matters. If that number was inside the top 100, or just barely outside it, they would have a better case. Really the fact that 4 of their 5 defeats are in MAC play just screams to me that they didn't play anybody good OOC.

The MAC actually has 5 teams inside the top 100 of the RPI, which is better than I expected. They are Toledo (39), Ohio (73), Eastern Michigan (83), Buffalo (86), and Western Michigan (95).

By the way, random thought...the MAC tournament is going to suck balls in terms of attendance this year with Kent, Akron, and Miami all struggling. Unless Buffalo and Toledo bring bigger numbers than they have in the past, its going to look embarrassing on tv.

I will say this much about the MAC Basketball Tournament, I think the league really hit the nail on the head when they redesigned the format to the current one we are using. Kudos to the MAC for that one! This format truly awards the teams that do well in the regular season. By not only giving them good seeding like the old format, but awarding them byes to the later rounds. I think this current format is terrific. Prior to the new format, while it made for an exciting tournament at times, often the "best" team or teams in the MAC were upset. Yes, if a team seeded say anywhere from 5-12 won, it was great for them, but it wasn't necessarily good for the conference. With the exception of that incredible run that Ohio made as the #9 seed where they beat the #1, #2 and #4 seeds to win the MAC and went on and won a game in the NCAA Tournament (where OU proved it probably was the best team in the MAC despite its poor seeding), it doesn't do much good for a "mid-major" conference like the MAC to have its tournament tipped upside down like that.

I honestly would much prefer to see the automatic champion decided like the Ivy League does where they play a round-robin regular season format and crown a champion. It makes every single regular season game HUGE! But they can do that with the format whereas the MAC can't because of the number of teams. I think the compromise was fully met by changing the tournament format to what it is. While the MAC still sends the tournament winner to the NCAA Tournament, what you do in the regular season now carries much more weight. We all know the MAC Tournament has been a graveyard for BG, but if......IF......we can ever get this program turned around, if you get a #1 or #2 seed, you only have to win two games to win the MAC Tournament now unlike needing to win twice as many games in the old format.

I don't see there being much to debate....basketball won a conference regular season title in 2009 and had an above .500 record a time or two. Hockey has been abysmal for most of that time period. Basketball has been mediocre to poor. Hockey has just been poor and I don't think playing in a tough league is enough of an excuse. Certainly not turning cartwheels over basketball...but they've been better.

I would love to see us excel in all sports. I was here as a student in the early 80's when we were good at football, hockey and basketball. In 82/83 all three won regular season titles in the MAC and CCHA. Let's do that again and we can argue over who's better instead of who's worse...

There's too much talent available within the conference footprint for the league to be so "meh". I can't wait until we have an opportunity to get a coach with some enthusiasm and drive working out of the Stroh. Maybe Jen Roos would like to tackle the job?

I agree, Flip, that there is too much hoops talent in this region for us to suck so badly. Chicago is a hotbed for HS hoops, and fits pretty well geographically. Detroit has a good hoops tradition, and Ohio usually has some players as well.

I really think that the downfall of MAC hoops was when we started trying to prop the football up on ESPN all the time. I think the MAC, as a whole, has made a conscious effort to try and compete on the D1A football landscape, and as such the basketball has suffered mightily. Meanwhile, other "mid-major" basketball conferences that DON'T attempt to compete in 1A football have made huge strides in overtaking and surpassing the MAC.

I hope that collegiate athletics hasn't grown so much that the MAC cannot hope to compete in both sports. I would never want to see us drop 1A football, but I can't help but sometimes feel as though our conference is spinning its wheels to remain the bottom of the 1A football barrel, when those resources might be enough to make them a top 10 basketball conference.

Regardless of the reasons for being where we are currently, I will whole heartedly agree that we don't deserve more respect than what we're getting. The fact that this BG team has been able to win as many conference games as they have should be a pretty strong indication of the state of the MAC basketball. I've only missed one conference home game this year (The NIU snoozer that I'm sure would not have changed my opinion), and the bottom line is that most of these games are just awful. Not that they're not competitive, they're just BAD basketball being played by a lot of BAD players on BAD teams.

gmartin wrote:ESPN is giving very little respect to the MAC. This is what their bracket expert thinks. With UT losing last night it pretty much killed any chance for an AT large bid so now the MAC will be a one bid conference. They have Western Michigan in their bracket. Rightfully so because Western is currently #1 in the MAC. But in the ESPN bracket they have Western as the #16 seed playing the overall #1 seed Florida. Has a MAC team every been below #14?? Seriously is the MAC that little respected.

I remember in 09 when BG won the MAC regular season title that we were projected as a 16 seed a couple times in bracketology

That 09 team would have probably played in the play-in game.

guest44 wrote:That 09 team would have probably played in the play-in game.

Pretty sure each projection I saw did have us in the play in game as well. I do wonder how well we would have traveled for that game had we made it. Yeah its the play in game, but it would have ended the long streak without an NCAA appearance, and played just down the road in Dayton

To do much of anything in the NCAA Tournament a team must have top caliber players (NBA types). Two of them can get their respective team the the Elite Eight. I do not even see this year's MAC player of the year making an NBA roster. With that in mind, and the lack of talent across the board in the league, an 11 or 12 seed is about the BEST we'll get.
It is fun to get an upset occasionally, but most of the time our teams are beaten fairly soundly in the first round. Why would this year be much different?