RE: 2019-20 basketball season -
I love ESPN+. I get to watch MAC basketball almost every night, and if not every night, then often 2-3 games in one day. What I like best is that we get a much better picture of all the teams in the conference much earlier than we used to when we might only see them when they played us. I've seen every team in the conference play at least a half plus parts of other games and besides ours, have seen multiple whole games by Toledo, UB, Akron, CMU, Miami, Ball St., OU, and BG.
At any rate, what I've seen is that there are several teams that could wind up in the one seed. (I'd never try to guess who is gong to win the MAC tourney, especially in December.) Toledo looks like the most talented team and they play in the weaker division, although that doesn't mean that much with the 18 game conference schedule: each team play 10 games within division and 8 games out of the division. That's not enough to matter a lot when overall MAC record determines seeding with no regard to division. (Please, MAC, do away with divisions in basketball. One set of standings, 1-12. Thank you.)
Right now, it looks like Toledo and an injury free BG at the top, then Kent and Akron, and maybe Buffalo, although Buffalo seems to have more problems that will need to get resolved before March than the others and has a new coach to try to do it. I think that will keep them from a 1-4 seed. NIU, Ohio, CMU, and Ball St. will have their nights when they are very tough to beat, but also have issues that keep them out of the top third. WMU, Miami, and EMU look to have some insurmountable problems that will prevent them from getting over .500 in conference.
So I guess now we don't need to play out the season. Got it all figured out. Seriously, this is going to be a fun season with more parity than we've had in a while. Love it.
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