Only six weeks remain in the regular season, and in the Mid-American Conference, most of the league is right to feel it could be in the mix by the time March arrives.
The MAC has a lower-tier group of four teams that are 2-5 or worse, but given the state of the conference, two of those teams have beaten 4-3 Kent State, and another just took league leader Akron to overtime.
Four storylines to watch as the MAC hits the homestretch of the regular season:
How the West is won
The MAC East is deeper and better, but the West is a fascinating compilation of styles that should produce an especially tight race. All the contenders are drastically different from one another.
Teams in the NBA often try to fill out their rotation with a “3-and-D” player who plays good defense and can shoot 3s. Ball State is a 3-and-D team. The Cardinals allow fewer points and shoot more 3s than anyone else in the conference, but live and die with their deep shooting.
Toledo is a gifted offensive team — the Rockets arguably are the most complete offense in the MAC — but they have very little depth and play only a seven-man rotation, which can make the long haul challenging.
Northern Illinois has maybe the best player in the conference in Eugene German plus a very good defense, but the Huskies struggle for consistent secondary scoring.
Central Michigan plays 100 miles per hour at all times — CMU is eighth in the country in tempo, per KenPom — but has been the worst defense in the MAC.
All four are separated by 1 1/2 games, and with more than half the schedule still to play, the West is a good bet to come down to the final week.
Will advanced stats prove prophetic with Akron?
Not many MAC preseason poll voters gave a second thought to the Zips, who lost leading scorer Daniel Utomi to transfer after last season, have a retread MAC head coach in John Groce, who was fired at Illinois after leaving Ohio, and a roster with seven transfers.
But it has worked wonderfully so far, and analytics suggest Akron — not Bowling Green — is clearly the team to beat.
Akron is 60th in KenPom, 65th in NET ranking, they have the two best 3-point shooters in the conference, a player of the year candidate in Loren Cristian Jackson, and the most efficient offense in the MAC by a wide margin.
The Zips still have to play Buffalo, BG, and Kent State twice each, however, games that will determine whether they can grab the league’s overall No. 1 seed.
Two East contenders could be shut out of a bye. Which two?
The top four teams in the MAC receive byes straight to the tournament quarterfinals in Cleveland. The West winner will take one of the four spots, and as it stands now, the West runner-up would earn one, too. That makes things interesting on the other side, doubly so when the East teams start beating up on each other in head-to-head meetings.
Akron and BG are 6-1 in the MAC; Kent State and Buffalo are 4-3. But this could look completely different in a week, as Akron plays Buffalo and Kent State this week, and BG heads to Buffalo on Friday.
At this stage, any of them could finish first in the East — or fourth. The head-to-head games will carry a ton of weight, as two of the four could win 10 or 11 league games and still have to play in the first round of the MAC tournament.
The spoiler candidates
Every year, the the MAC tournament produces a surprise team spoiling everything for one (or more) of their conference peers. During the past seven seasons alone: seven teams seeded sixth or lower made the semifinals, an 11 or 12 seed won on the road three times, and the No. 6 seed won the entire thing just three years ago.
History tells us that a team we aren’t paying much attention to now will rip up the MAC bracket six weeks from now.
So, which one is it?
Pay attention to Ohio, which can really shoot the ball — 51.4 percent effective field-goal percentage — and Eastern Michigan, which has had a nightmare 0-7 start to MAC play but still has a top-50 defense. Both probably will be on the road to start the MAC tournament, but either could send someone packing on the right night.
First Published January 27, 2020, 9:05 p.m.
