RE: Eight MAC teams to the post-season?
The linchpin of that is two NIT bids. There's only an NIT auto-bid if the regular season champion does not win the tournament, but with 32 in the NIT after the 68 to the NCAA, having multiple schools considered among the top-100 helps the prospects of taking two NIT bids. And so with five schools with in the 100 or better RPI range (31 Buffalo, 75 CMU, 77 Toledo, 86 Kent State, 96 Bowling Green), and four in the 50-100 range in the ESPN BPI ranking (62 Buffalo, 73 Toledo, 81 CMU, 94 Bowling Green), the odds of two NIT bid, with or without an autobid, are higher.
As always, the more regular season champions win their tournaments among the ranks of the one-NCAA bid conferences, the more at-large opportunities there will be in the NIT.
If three schools go to the two NCAA owned tournaments, then with 48 places to fill in the pay to play tournaments, many P5 schools uninterested in playing in the CBI, and the CIT not open to the P5 schools, (unless I have that reversed), how many MAC schools play in the post-season may depend on how many MAC schools are willing to pay the "ticket guarantees" as host schools in the two pay to play tournaments. If three of the MAC schools are willing to spend the money to host in the first round of either the CBI or CIT, then two more being able to play as traveling schools does not seem unlikely, but there is a question of how interested they would be in playing that role, with the lower financial commitment of traveling schools also bringing with it lower odds of advancing in the tournament.
Eight could well be as much a matter of five MAC schools that are interested in playing in the pay to play tournaments as five MAC schools not going to March Madness or the NIT that attract the interest of the pay to play tournaments.
(This post was last modified: 03-07-2015 01:32 AM by BruceMcF.)
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