(01-05-2018 12:37 PM)uakronkid 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.

Not having terrible teams is the first step to having a good conference. Having one or two teams step up and get a top-40 RPI and 25+ wins is the second step. If we sustain this, then we're improving the conference the right way instead of having on good team and hoping that they lose in the conference final to a bad team (and thus hurting their seeding), which relies on luck and doesn't do anything to raise the conference profile.

It helps to not have bottom feeders dragging down the various ratings of the better teams in the conference. However, my point is that the MAC is better off having 2-3 teams that drastically standout with cellar dwellers for the remainder of the conference, than to have parity with everyone somewhere between 100-250 with most teams somewhere around .500 in conference play. Take the WCC for example. Most people consider it to be a solid basketball conference, but the reality is it's essentially Gonzaga, St Mary's, and cannon fodder. They have 10 teams and two of them are in the 300s and two more are knocking on the door.

For the MAC to gain some traction it's more important to have a couple of strong teams to hang their hat on rather than trying to point to the strength of the conference from top to bottom. Obviously not having anchors dragging down the SOS can help with that, but it would be more beneficial to have the top separate from the pack than it is to have the tail of the pack catch up.