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Best player: Eugene Jarvis, Kent State. He's all of 5 feet, 5 inches and 158 pounds -- and fifth in the nation in rushing, 14th in all-purpose running. Just hope he survives Saturday against Ohio State's sausage factory defense.

Best coaching job: Brady Hoke, Ball State. The Cardinals are four points short of being 5-1, including a win at Nebraska.

Biggest surprise: The Buffalo Bulls won two MAC games combined the past two seasons. They've already equaled that this year with a 2-1 league start.

Biggest disappointment: Toledo. The Rockets are 118th nationally in scoring defense, giving up a minimum of 34 points in every game to date. Not coincidentally, they're also 0-2 in the MAC.

Who will win it: With the MAC's screwed up scheduling, with teams playing varying numbers of league games and only divisional games counting for division championships, it's difficult to figure out. But let's go with Central Michigan in the West and Bowling Green in the East.

Flip a coin right now.

Falcon137 wrote:Who will win it: With the MAC's screwed up scheduling, with teams playing varying numbers of league games and only divisional games counting for division championships, it's difficult to figure out. But let's go with Central Michigan in the West and Bowling Green in the East.

"But let's go with"...just about anyone. This year could be as screwy as most years in basketball. Halfway through the season and no one in the MAC has really separated themselves.

We know who is downright awful: Northern and Toledo.

If I had to pick right now who will come out on top in the East, my pick would be BG. Offense looks real good so far and there isn't a dominant defense in the MAC to stop it. Should have been a closer game against BC. But sh!t happens.

Saturday will be interesting. Winner could hold the tiebreaker.

No doubt. At this point, it's a guessing game. Akron, Miami and BGSU are all in good positions, but no team has made a statement.

redhawkforlife, you're spot on. Saturday's game is very, very big. The winner puts itself in great position.

I believe CMU is 3-0 in the West already? If thats the case they only have 2 more divisional games that count and they would really only need to go 1-1 in those games to clinch...

This is the game that will decide the east...I'm 75% sure of that. I'm still holding 25% for our game with Buffalo.

BGSUFootballFan wrote:I believe CMU is 3-0 in the West already? If thats the case they only have 2 more divisional games that count and they would really only need to go 1-1 in those games to clinch...

Yeah, Central Michigan has already won at home against Toledo (52-31), at home against NIU (35-10) and the BIG one, on the road at Ball State. They pretty much have things under control, the only thing that might take them out is for WMU to get hot and beat them down the road (they do play in Kalamazoo this year)

Flipper wrote:This is the game that will decide the east...I'm 75% sure of that. I'm still holding 25% for our game with Buffalo.

Flip ... I'm not sure so it will decide the East. BG, Miami, Akron and, gulp!, Buffalo are all very much in play right now. The winner of Saturday's game definitely takes a big step toward gaining command of the division race, but it will by no means be over.

I know they haven't played up to what was expected, but last year's result combined with road game, combined with memories of Garret Wolfe make me think twice about chalking up the Kent State game for anything...

Of course, we'll worry about that after we hammer Miami(OH), won't we?

1987alum wrote:

Flipper wrote:This is the game that will decide the east...I'm 75% sure of that. I'm still holding 25% for our game with Buffalo.

Flip ... I'm not sure so it will decide the East. BG, Miami, Akron and, gulp!, Buffalo are all very much in play right now. The winner of Saturday's game definitely takes a big step toward gaining command of the division race, but it will by no means be over.

The ONLY reason Buffalo is in play right now is because one of their conference games so far was against Temple, and the other was against Ohio. Both those teams blow. As soon as they face us, Kent, Miami, Akron, etc, they are gonna get drilled. As long as you can keep Drew Willy somewhat in check, you'll beat that team 99 times out of 100. Look at Ball State, they beat the living crap out of Buffalo. The fact that they are atop the division right now and that Kent is at the bottom speaks volumes about who these teams have played thus far, not how good they are.

bgsufalcon24 wrote:The ONLY reason Buffalo is in play right now is because one of their conference games so far was against Temple, and the other was against Ohio. Both those teams blow. As soon as they face us, Kent, Miami, Akron, etc, they are gonna get drilled.

The last two times we played Buffalo, it was a nailbiter. There was last year's triple-OT lightning fest and the the Omar-led sleepwalker in 2005 that was hanging in the balance until the fourth quarter.

I wouldn't discount Buffalo and I certainly wouldn't chalk up any of our remaining games as gimmes. We haven't earned that right yet.

1987alum wrote:

Flipper wrote:This is the game that will decide the east...I'm 75% sure of that. I'm still holding 25% for our game with Buffalo.

Flip ... I'm not sure so it will decide the East. BG, Miami, Akron and, gulp!, Buffalo are all very much in play right now. The winner of Saturday's game definitely takes a big step toward gaining command of the division race, but it will by no means be over.

I agree that the winner doesn't have anything locked up, but the loser definitely will be in a bad position. I'm thinking the winner of this game is at about 85% chance of winning the East.

1987alum wrote:

bgsufalcon24 wrote:The ONLY reason Buffalo is in play right now is because one of their conference games so far was against Temple, and the other was against Ohio. Both those teams blow. As soon as they face us, Kent, Miami, Akron, etc, they are gonna get drilled.

The last two times we played Buffalo, it was a nailbiter. There was last year's triple-OT lightning fest and the the Omar-led sleepwalker in 2005 that was hanging in the balance until the fourth quarter.

I wouldn't discount Buffalo and I certainly wouldn't chalk up any of our remaining games as gimmes. We haven't earned that right yet.

Let's see here. I don't think you can say 2005's game was that close, seeing as BG won 27-7. It's doubtful Buffalo's players walked off thinking "ah we could have won that one, we only lost by 20." Maybe it was close early in the second half, but I for one never got the feeling that we might lose that day. 2006 was a different story because we were losing in the fourth quarter. I remember somebody telling me during that game during one of the lightning delays that we hadn't lost to Buffalo at the Doyt since 1982. It certainly made me pray like heck that 2006 wouldn't become a trivia answer like that.

It's safe to say that we've improved massively since last year on both offense and special teams. Now has Buffalo made those improvements to keep up? Right now I'd say probably not. But maybe they'll prove me wrong later on. They do have a shot at moving to 3-1 in conference play against Turdledo this week. Given that Turdledo blows harder than the BG wind on a January day, the bulls have a great shot at winning. Vandelay picked them, and I forget who MAC Report had, but I think they picked Buffalo also.

I'm more interested in what they can do once they actually play a decent MAC team. The one decent team they played (Ball State), they got hammered. I'd like to think BG could do the same.

2 things
1)I wouldn't worry about the UB game last year...one reason it was that close: special teams. We have greatly improved there and I see no way that they compete with us this season
2)I'll admit I haven't followed CMU too much, but how did they, not only lose, but get pounded by that 1-AA team? that's not gonna look good for the conference.

BGSUVA wrote:2 things
1)I wouldn't worry about the UB game last year...one reason it was that close: special teams. We have greatly improved there and I see no way that they compete with us this season
2)I'll admit I haven't followed CMU too much, but how did they, not only lose, but get pounded by that 1-AA team? that's not gonna look good for the conference.

FWIW, I think North Dakota State is undefeated. They're actually up pretty high in the Sagarin rankings.