In looking at Thursday's MAC Men's Quarter Finals, I think Buffalo and Ball State have the toughest match ups with Central Michigan and Kent State respectively. While I think Buffalo will prevail in a tougher than expected game, Kent State has a solid chance of upsetting Ball State based on their past tournament history and the way Ball State has been playing the last couple of weeks. As for Toledo and EMU, I just think they have more talent and experience than the younger Miami and Akron teams respectively, to get upset. However as the under 500 record Cleveland State has proven in the Horizon League Tournament, anything can happen!

This will be a close one because we haven’t played in 6 days

Toledo 72
Miami 66

My gut on the other quarters are:

Buffalo by double digits
Kent in a relatively close game
EMU by double digits.

I saw we had only played Miami once and won by only 6, so I was curious about what there schedule had been looking like.

They could be very tough. Lost to OU twice, but then eliminated them in the 1st round. Lost to EMU by only 1. BEAT Buffalo. Went into OT in 3 games. I hope we are ready to play. Here is the latter part of Miami's schedule:

Miami is well coached and their starters are fairly athletic. They have a quick pg who like most quick pgs gave us trouble. They are young. They are not deep. Their inside game is fairly limited and they don't have a lot of shooting. To me they are a pretty good matchup for us because they probably won't outscore you. This is a game we want to keep the pace up, switch some defenses, press a little, wear them down and make them match our jump shooters. We beat them by 6 at their place when they had their biggest home crowd of the season and a rare national tv broadcast. If it's close that loss to EMU might help. I imagine our guys don't want their NCAA dreams to come down to the final minute and will work hard to put them away. The other factor is playing in a pro arena without much backdrop to the basket. That tends to throw off shooters a bit, especially if they are unfamiliar with it (we saw that at Syracuse a bit). I'd watch to see who is feeling comfortable shooting the ball early and who is struggling to adjust to the optics of the Q.

(03-06-2018 06:24 PM)Toledo Football 1st Wrote:  I saw we had only played Miami once and won by only 6, so I was curious about what there schedule had been looking like.

They could be very tough. Lost to OU twice, but then eliminated them in the 1st round. Lost to EMU by only 1. BEAT Buffalo. Went into OT in 3 games. I hope we are ready to play. Here is the latter part of Miami's schedule:

Code:

Feb. 09     Toledo.    Oxford     L, 73-67
Feb. 13     Eastern    Ypsi.      L, 58-57
Feb. 17     Ohio...    Athens     L, 92-87 (OT)
Feb. 20     Buffalo    Oxford     W, 84-81
Feb. 24     Akron..    Akron.     W, 64-62 (OT)
Feb. 27     Kent...    Kent..     L, 90-83 (OT)
Mar. 02     Ohio...    Oxford     L, 75-66
Mar. 05     Ohio...    Oxford     W, 68-55

Well, they lost twice to Ohio in the regular season, then beat them in the first round of the MAC tourney by 13. Doesn't bode well for EMU if we win and they win....

Miami keeps games close. That means it could come down to free throws. Coach better have had the team practicing free throws for 6 days straight - and the team better have been making their own time to shoot free throws. Better to practice free throws so it is competitive in some way with other teammates involved so there is some pressure on every shot. Like in golf, you don't want to be a driving range and practice green pro, and then choke out on the course because you can't handle the pressure.

Saw a bit of Miami's last game. A little home town pride watching Bowsher's Dalonte Brown diving across the floor to block a pass. Hope he doesn't do that against us.