I stumbled upon the attached spreadsheet that breaks out how many tourney credits each conference has banked. I knew the MAC has done poorly, but when you see the MAC has been outperformed by the Southland, Sun Belt, Horizon, C-USA, CAA, and others we feel we are equal to or better than it is kind of eye opening.

I get that we haven't had an at-large team since 1999, which definitely hurts, but why do you guys we have done so poorly compared to our peers? I'm counting 5 of the last 6 years our conference champ was a 1 and done team. The only team that banked us extra credits was Ohio during their Sweet 16 run.

(01-13-2017 12:13 PM)kreed5120 Wrote:  I stumbled upon the attached spreadsheet that breaks out how many tourney credits each conference has banked. I knew the MAC has done poorly, but when you see the MAC has been outperformed by the Southland, Sun Belt, Horizon, C-USA, CAA, and others we feel we are equal to or better than it is kind of eye opening.

I get that we haven't had an at-large team since 1999, which definitely hurts, but why do you guys we have done so poorly compared to our peers? I'm counting 5 of the last 6 years our conference champ was a 1 and done team. The only team that banked us extra credits was Ohio during their Sweet 16 run.

It's the same reason we can't get an at-large. We just haven't had "That" team. We are deeper than most of the conferences you mention but our best team just hasn't made the jump to light speed. As a conference we need one team to become dominant. Kent almost got there and so has Akron but they just haven't taken the next step. Not sure it's going to happen since we have football.

The bias which has set into the selection process will likely never again let an at-large MAC team in the tournament. The only way I could see it is if a MAC team had 1 total loss, or possibly 2 losses in rare circumstances. Otherwise, no chance, the bias is set in concrete

(01-13-2017 05:10 PM)MaddDawgz02 Wrote:  The bias which has set into the selection process will likely never again let an at-large MAC team in the tournament. The only way I could see it is if a MAC team had 1 total loss, or possibly 2 losses in rare circumstances. Otherwise, no chance, the bias is set in concrete

Bias hasn't cost us any at-large bids. Performance has. The last time we had a team that might have been worthy of an at-large bid that didn't make the tournament was 2005 and there was plenty of argument against them. The bias that does come into play is scheduling. The fact that we have to play every important game on the road is where we get screwed. I remember in 2005 ESPN was comparing Notre Dame's resume against Buffalo and Digger Phelps kept bringing up the fact that Buffalo had lost by just under 20 points to UConn and the Irish had beaten them by 10 or something like that. What he failed to mention was that Buffalo had played at UConn and Notre Dame beat UConn at home. When Notre Dame played UConn in Storrs they lost by, you guessed it, just under 20 points. That little factoid seemed to escape him.

Yeah, what I was more so getting at is it seems other conferences that are perennial 12-15 seeds manage to pull upsets, yet the MAC consistently is a 1 and done team. Example is Middle Tennessee was nothing special yet they still managed to beat MSU.

Edit: It isn't just the tourney neither. The MAC has 0 Kenpom Top 100 OOC wins. Other conferences seem to stumble into 1-2 of these per year, but the MAC can't even buy one to save their lives.

(01-13-2017 06:08 PM)kreed5120 Wrote:  Yeah, what I was more so getting at is it seems other conferences that are perennial 12-15 seeds manage to pull upsets, yet the MAC consistently is a 1 and done team. Example is Middle Tennessee was nothing special yet they still managed to beat MSU.

It is very strange that we haven't had a team make it to the 2nd Round since Ohio way back in like 2012.

WMU played Syracuse when they won it. It seemed like a tough match-up, but then Dayton ended up winning our bracket.

I felt like Miami was beatable when Buffalo played them last season too.

Akron seems to win the MAC every year, only to bow out in Round 1 every year.

It's frustrating.

It has to start with the MAC beating the other low/mid majors consistenly. Why we can't do that, I'm not sure, but as someone else posted, it probably has to do with us having football too. For the low-majors especially, basketball is the sport they pour all their resources into. But then why would a CUSA team beat the B1G team? Not sure.