.... is still going to happen in the current world of MAC basketball. But how do you folks see the division leaders going into next season.

Everything looks up to grabs to me..

(03-29-2019 07:13 AM)cleveland Wrote:  .... is still going to happen in the current world of MAC basketball. But how do you folks see the division leaders going into next season.

Everything looks up to grabs to me..

I agree.

I looked at the all-MAC teams and counted the number of returnees for next year and it wasn't very many. Think around five.

I can only speak for EMU but a near total reload with only half the squad returning. I figure two starters return, Toure' ©, and McAdoo (SG).

EMU seems to be going hard for shooters so we might see a different type of team next year.

Yeah, it seemed the teams that weren't hit hard by graduation got hit by losing key transfers. It's still too soon for me to make projections. I want to see how the transfer wire plays out first.

(03-29-2019 08:04 AM)kreed5120 Wrote:  Yeah, it seemed the teams that weren't hit hard by graduation got hit by losing key transfers. It's still too soon for me to make projections. I want to see how the transfer wire plays out first.

Right now, East-West....

I say Bowling Green and Toledo.

After that ... on both sides...?????????????

At this point, it would seem that next year will be a down year for the MAC. I keep thinking that Ball State will be good, but they never are. They lose Moses and Persons, but they have a lot of talent coming back. Of course that talent wasn't good enough to win games this year. Toledo gets hit pretty hard, losing two key starters and a their top bench player. In order to compete, the Rockets will need some production from freshmen or redshirt freshmen. Strangely enough, Bowling Green would seem to be the preseason favorite to win the conference.

Maybe this deserves another thread, but on the women's side Ohio looks to be extremely strong. The Bobcats lose one starter and one bench player from a very deep team. Next year Ohio will have available a transfer who averaged 13.4 ppg two years ago for a good St. Francis (PA) team. Ohio just missed an at-large NCAA bid and is in the final 8 of the NIT. They should be better next year. By the way, the Bobcats have yet to lose to a non-MAC team yet this season.

I thought Ball St would be a borderline top 50 team this year. They were to start then totally collapsed.

it's unlikely the MAC will be the 8th or 9th best conference again next year. ohio will likely decline from an average to weak team. EMU will be less talented. Toledo loses several key players. Buffalo loses a lot in both coaching and personnel. Ball St loses 2 key players. Akron has a lot of question marks, etc...

As I see it Kent State has the top ceiling in the league but a few things need to come together. If their roster stays intact and their commits all enroll they are a very interesting roster playing for a good veteran coach. Williams was becoming their most consistent guard down the stretch last year. Walker was an amazing talent when he was locked in which was fairly often. You can't underestimate the value of losing a guy that talented who plays that hard. Still, he was a sometimes erratic influence on that team throughout the years, and they have a lot of backcourt talent next yr. Along with williams, roberts is a good offensive guard who should make the typical jump from promising frosh to a good player as a soph. they got a rs transfer 5th year guy named simons (sp?) who led juco in scoring and hit for 10 ppg as a part time player in the MWC. He's got a year in their program already and should fill plenty of shooting guard minutes. And if he comes through they got a commit from the mercurial and low key notorious rakym felder, who was a freshman sparkplug as 6th man on south carolina's final 4 run a few years back. got in a trouble for a bar fight situation that may have included him knocking someone out with a sucker punch, although charges were later dropped by prosecutors so there may be more to the story. was in and out of school but not playing as a soph and got arrested again a year or so later, I don't think convicted of anything but was kicked off team and later emerged taking classes but not playing at a juco in new mexico. he's a very confident short muscular east coast jersey/nyc area scoring pg who give them a real dynamo if he suits up and is at his best on a couple levels. if not, they still should have a good backcourt rotation because williamson-(bey) is a solid physical defensive and rebounding wing with experince, who can guard a few positions, if needed. kent also should get back emerging pf danny pippin who had some knee issues. he and returning pf whittington will be 5th year guys and might be eligible for grad transfers. but if both are healthy and on the roster kent will have a solid starting frontcourt. so, i see the flashes as a potentially dangerous underdog tourney team if all or nearly all of their expected roster fills in and is healthy. kind of like a buffalo 2017-18 type team. and, Kent generally has a winning team so the expectation should be for more of that.

as a UT fan I am excited about the change of pace with next year's team. toledo loses 2 long time starters in jaelen sanford and nate navigato. both made a lot of jump shots and handled the ball pretty well. each became good defenders by the end of their career. both played pretty slow. navigato just was. and sanford preferred a methodical style. next year's team will be driven by 3rd yr starting pg marreon jackson who was toledo's best clutch player his first 2 seasons but somewhat deferred in an offensive unit more built around sanford and navigato. with the new backcourt inserting highly recruited rs 6-5 guard keshaun saunders a downhill athletic player for sanford. and all MAC Freshman team AJ Edu at 6-10 for navigato, Toledo will put a bigger faster squad on the floor with fewer shooters. If UT can get 30 minutes a game out of Edu their defense will be that much better. He is an emerging star who is 15 lbs away from being the MAC's top interior defender. The key for Toledo will be if they can figure out how to play their 2 big guys, Edu and Knapke, together effectively. Since Knapke can shoot and handle the ball and Edu has the potential to be a good driver, it might work. However, as EMU has just shown us playing 2 bigs together in this age of basketball is tricky. but, like kent, toledo generally has a winning team so expect them to be good until proven otherwise.

BG would also be a favorite as they were good and return a lot of their core. losing the big guy wiggins is a blow. not easy to find a legit quality 6-10 guy for a MAC team, especially one that usually doesn't compete for titles like BG. the main thing with BG is Huger is establishing himself as both a great fit and a very good coach and program manager. they will be experienced, hungry and have scorers. again, the question is if they have enough depth. I feel like BG is a player or two away from having a great team. It could just be a good 6th man, but they'll need big improvement from a bench guy or a new player or 2 to emerge to win it, imo.

I can't speak on UB because no one knows who will be on that team in 6 months. if their roster and recruiting class is mostly intact they will contend. they had 2 very good physical redshirt transfers johnson and grant who would be 5th yr players, they stay around. if you have them, graves, jordan, williams, segu, and 1 of the current juco frontcourt recruits is good. then, you got a good core. but there is so much that could happen there in the next few months that it could be a rebuild next year, too.

I always respect keno davis' ability to put an interesting roster together in a tough place to recruit like CMU. They lose their top 2 guards but usually bring in a couple impact transfers and have some solid veteran players back. they also signed a promising local big kid. they'll need to find improvement without austin who was their leader in play, determination, voice and ballhandling. plus, a good combo guard in roundtree. tough to improve there, but if they find comparable replacements they should be a little older and better elsewhere.

i can't see miami, ball state, akron, NIU, EMU, western and ohio contending (in that order of strength). however, murphy has a knack for finding new talent in the cracks and has a couple pieces returning. miami had a key guy transfer out and i'm not sold on sibande and his line drive jumper as a consistent star or any of the point guards yet. ball state is probably a sleeper but I don't see a capable pg there unless there is someone who comes up on the low.

as for schedule interest 4 MAC teams have spots in notable exempt tourneys; ohio, buffalo, bg, and ball st. those are opportunities to play name teams and good mid majors on a neutral court. how the MAC does in those will be a pretty good cross section top-mid-bottom of the leagues strength.

(03-30-2019 11:22 PM)pono Wrote:  . kent also should get back emerging pf danny pippin who had some knee issues. he and returning pf whittington will be 5th year guys and might be eligible for grad transfers. but if both are healthy and on the roster kent will have a solid starting frontcourt. so, i see the flashes as a potentially dangerous underdog tourney team

Pippin took a medical redshirt this season and has two years left.

(03-30-2019 11:22 PM)pono Wrote:  ohio will likely decline from an average to weak team.

Did you watch any Ohio games last season? It WAS a weak team, as evidenced by a last-place MAC East finish. I guess we can get worse, and that's often the initial case with a coaching change, but that team was far below average.

Ohio had their moments non conference before fading in the league. maybe, i was being charitable, but we can probably agree they will be WEAKER.

is dartis coming back?

(03-31-2019 02:44 PM)pono Wrote:  Ohio had their moments non conference before fading in the league. maybe, i was being charitable, but we can probably agree they will be WEAKER.

is dartis coming back?

I can't imagine Ohio will be too much weaker than we were. We definitely are losing talent but I don't think you can underemphasize how bad our offensive system was last year. Our starting PG this year had a 21 game streak without a single game with more assists than turnovers. He led the team in FG attempts yet only had a handful of games where he shot more than 50%. He had 10 games where he shot higher than 50% from the FT line and 21 where he did not. He shot 21% from three. But the worst part about him was that everybody on the team had to create their own shot. Considering we weren't built to do that it's a recipe for disaster and for some reason Saul just kept trotting him out there. It wasn't until the last few games where he started letting Jason Preston run the offense more and it showed. Too late to save his job though.

Word is that Dartis may be done because of the hip. I'm going to guess that Boals will bring in a couple of JUCOs.

So basically the bad news is that Ohio is losing some players to graduation. The good news is that Ohio is losing some players to graduation.

(03-31-2019 08:13 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  So basically the bad news is that Ohio is losing some players to graduation. The good news is that Ohio is losing some players to graduation.

That is one fine post NIU007.

A fine detailed post by pono, with the Ohio update (-:

I'm also guessing that the SUNY-Buffalo to the American/Big East talk has graduated as well.

(04-01-2019 12:44 AM)pono Wrote:  I'm also guessing that the SUNY-Buffalo to the American/Big East talk has graduated as well.

Well I doubt SUNY-Buffalo would be considered for admission to the Big East.

As I understand it, the Big East is composed on private, religious based institutions (all Catholic except Butler).

UB doesn't fit the model and there is the issue of football... Where does it's team go?

I haven't given serious thought about AAC but they are at 12 schools now. I assume they could be a candidate if an opening arose. Otherwise, they seem to fit based on geography, sports, academics, etc.

(04-01-2019 04:59 AM)emu steve Wrote:  

(04-01-2019 12:44 AM)pono Wrote:  I'm also guessing that the SUNY-Buffalo to the American/Big East talk has graduated as well.

Well I doubt SUNY-Buffalo would be considered for admission to the Big East.

As I understand it, the Big East is composed on private, religious based institutions (all Catholic except Butler).

UB doesn't fit the model and there is the issue of football... Where does it's team go?

I was reading "the issue of football" entirely differently ... that is, why would the Big East let that camel get its nose in the tent after having successfully escaped FBS football.

(03-31-2019 02:44 PM)pono Wrote:  Ohio had their moments non conference before fading in the league. maybe, i was being charitable, but we can probably agree they will be WEAKER.

is dartis coming back?

Dartis is a great jump shooter with a serious hip ailment. To me, the most likely scenarios involve him not being the All-MAC-type contributor he once was no matter what. He may return, but who knows what surgery, sitting and rehab have done to his form. He could be done playing college ball. I suppose he could grad-transfer, though I don't think he's entered the portal.

If he does return and is even close to his old form, I am confident in saying Ohio will not be the last-place MAC East team.

In other news, I think (OK, more hope) that Boals will be very active and aggressive in upgrading this team. He's already nudged one of Saul's recruits out of his LOI and he's definitely aiming higher than the prior regime.