kreed5120

That's fairly devastating this late into the recruiting cycle.

I think it's fair to say all the 9-6 teams are securely in the field as well. A lot of those 6 and 7 wins teams face one another so it's not possible for them all to win out. It's more just about seeding.

There are 14 Sun Belt teams and only 12 MAC teams so 2 Sun Belt teams are left out each year. Marshall volunteered to be one of those 2 teams. Their reasoning is they typically schedule 2-3 MAC teams OOC anyway so it makes them playing in the contest redundant.

This seems like the best alternative. It also would eliminate the need for the MAC to rent the arena for Wednesday for the women. Those games could instead be played Thursday before the men's if it adopted the same format. You would have 4 Thursday, 4 Friday, and 2 Saturday games in total between the men's and women's tournament.

That's an extra day the MAC would have to rent Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, which isn't exactly cheap. Frankly, that's just not going to happen.

The MAC eliminated the on campus first round games to reduce costs as a response to covid. They said it was only temporary, but all the schools are still very much struggling as much, if not more, than before. I don't see them changing course.

Considering if the season ended right now the Zips would be the first undefeated MAC team since 1957-1958 Miami I'd agree. My comment was more that if the Zips don't run the table, it opens up the door for Steele. The best coach doesn't win as often as you might think. Nick Saban, arguably the greatest coach in college football history, only was named SEC COY 5 times. He has won more national championships than he has won SEC COY. The media voters aren't always the brightest.

I think the All-MAC teams will also be interesting. On one end no Zips player looks particularly great in the counting stats voters often prefer. On the other hand the Zips are dog walking the conference so how can a voter not include them.

When Dambrot was at Akron I think Keith only won the award 2 or 3 times. The reasoning being the talent on the roster was held against him. Voters seem to forget in collegiate athletics a coaches job is more than just X's and O's. He's also the GM. Recruiting is probably 60% of the job. I think it would take Akron going 18-0 or 17-1 for Groce to win it. Unfairly as it might be.

Have you seen how bad the rest of the MAC is?

Perhaps has a parent or grandparent from there. Another option is they gave him a passport (or whatever) to play for them. That's pretty common with many countries who want to grow soccer or basketball in their home country, but lack the home talent to qualify for a world cup or Olympics. I know the Phillipines actively has granted citizenship to get players. Turkey gave citizenship to Cedi Osman as well. There are countless other examples, but I don't care to take a deep dive into it.

I know he got busted for 5lbs. He may have been the one to sell to the guys who sold the dime bags to college kids, but it's not like he was some sort of drug kingpin. It's possible he could have just used the money to scale into something larger. Who knows.

There could also be a third. Players are actually allowed to openly get get paid today. A guys like Abreu may not have bothered with the hassle of selling dime bags to college students if he had someone like Wentz cutting him a $30k check.

Anyone get it?

The team that lost back-to-back to directional Michigan's. I guess ESPN just hires anyone these days.

How is Miami #61???

I hope nobody bet on Akron to cover the spread. That would require a monstrous 2nd half.

Even before legal sports betting was a thing in Ohio I always felt the lines were useful. Particular when you might not be familiar with an opponent.

A win against NIU and Akron will match the 2012-2013 teams 13-0 start to MAC play. That team won 19 in a row between OOC and MAC play.

Hopefully not good enough that you placed any bets

Nobody saw 8th seeded Kent making the Finals last year. Weird things happen in single elimination tournaments.

Why would any of that happen? All that will happen is a more 18-14 power conference teams would get in.

In hindsight NIU should have just kept Montgomery. Being a middle of the pack MAC program is their ceiling given how little support they get.

Teams 7-9 still play one another. They can't all win out.

I actually think Freeman leaving helped some of these guys develop. When you have a talent like Freeman it becomes easy at times to just run the offense through him and let him do his thing. With him gone we were forced to redevelop our offense and players were kind of just tossed off the boat and forced to either learn to swim or drown. Obviously with Freeman we would be a better team. I'm just not sure we would have seen our guards develop the way they have if he was still here.