(01-05-2018 12:57 PM)george14 Wrote:  

(01-05-2018 10:15 AM)eich41 Wrote:  In theory that's good, but if that's the case, we're just looking at teams beating each other up, and another one bid, 14 seed team in the tourney. It's called parity when it occurs in a Major conference, it's called mediocrity in the MAC.

Well yeah, because the MAC is significantly weaker than the top conferences. The MAC is a solid basketball conference but we don't play enough good teams routinely to call it parity. At least parity in the positive sense. Look at CMU for instance, our OOC was pathetic. We have a good record and I hope we can continue to win, but there are no favors when we have a SOS in the 300's.

You're missing the point. The MAC is better off having one or two top 50-75 teams that can make a run in the tourney, regardless of how bad the rest of the conference is, rather than having all twelve teams rated 110-122, and everyone just beats up on each other. See my reference to the WCC above. It's generally considered to be a good basketball conference, but it's all driven by Gonzaga and St. Mary's. Occasionally BYU will field a decent team. Outside of that, it's trash.

Here is where the MAC has ranked according to RPI the last 4 years:

2013-14 - 12th
2014-15 - 10th
2015-16 - 10th
2016-17 - 14th

Outside of last year, we've actually been pretty solid as a conference (ahead of multi-bid leagues), but it hasn't shown in our perception or seeding in the tournament. We're much better off having 2-3 teams head and shoulders above everyone else who can put together a great record than we are to have a big group of solid teams beating each other all year.

The best case for the MAC right now is for Ball State to run the table. To a lesser extent, it'd be good to have Buffalo/CMU run the table outside of BSU games. Buffalo has a solid RPI due to playing a solid OOC schedule, problem is (for the sake of this discussion) that they didn't win any of the games against the good teams they played, so BSU would benefit the MAC more with the win over ND . I threw CMU in there only because of the current RPI and the ability to put up a gaudy W-L record (in theory). Obviously I'm basing this solely on ratings/resume/record right now, not trying to handicap who the best team is 1 game into the MAC season.