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Topic: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Topic: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

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JSF
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Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/12/2012 10:48:17 PM

...but not this year. The MAC is bad. I'm going to give Akron a pass for their loss to Coastal Carolina, as they were missing three important men. But man, look at what's happened so far:

Buffalo lost at home to Princeton and lost by 27 to FSU.
Toledo got destroyed at Minnesota and lost to Loyola by 12. 12!
NIU lost by 13 to venerable Nebraska-Omaha. That's not the Cornhuskers.
BG had to rally to beat Lake Erie College, an NAIA school.
Miami got blown out by NC State.
EMU lost to Jacksonville State.

Imagine if Kent had not beaten Drexel. I don't think things are going to get much better. We're going to need Akron (and maybe Kent?) to pick things up, because the rest of the MAC looks awful.

"Loyalty to a hometown or city is fleeting and interchangeable, but college is a stamp of identity."- Kyle Whelliston, One Beautiful Season.

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whocaresgobobcats
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/12/2012 10:53:57 PM

Not going to be a good year for the Bobcats RPI.

bobcat695
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/12/2012 11:13:56 PM

The MAC is a one bid conference. It always is and this year is no different. As much as I hate it, the only thing that matters is Cleveland in March. The only thing the regular season does is decide whether the conference champion gets a 12, 13, or 14 seed in the NCAA tourney.

"You can't un-fist a fist pump." - Saul Phillips 1/24/15

JSF
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/12/2012 11:21:30 PM

Murray State and Ohio Valley is a direct refutation of this myth.

Ozcat
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/12/2012 11:24:36 PM

If we want any shot at an at-large, we need to go 14-2 at worst in conference. Losses would have to be to Akron and Kent only. We cannot survive any other misstep I wouldn't think.

Tom Valentino
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 12:20:53 AM

JSF wrote:

Re: Bowling Green - Lake Erie is an NCAA D-2 program. And while it was a loss, BUGS had a respectable showing against Cleveland State tonight.

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Monroe Slavin
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 12:32:11 AM

THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!!!!

Where's the band?!
WHERE"S THE BAND?!

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JSF
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 12:40:59 AM

Tom Valentino wrote:

JSF wrote:

Re: Bowling Green - Lake Erie is an NCAA D-2 program. And while it was a loss, BUGS had a respectable showing against Cleveland State tonight.

You're right. Cleveland State is in rebuilding mode this year, I think.

The Optimist
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 1:45:32 AM

If Akron can turn it around and we win like I believe we can, the MAC can be a 2-bid league.

I've seen crazier things happen.

Bobcat Mac
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 7:38:47 AM

KRON was able to beat up on a team out of the Cleveland suburbs last night!

Eagle66
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 8:49:54 AM

JSF wrote:

Imagine if Kent had not beaten Drexel.

I was at the game. It very easily could have gone the other way. Kent looked terrible for the majority of the game, except Randall Holt, he looked better than I thought he would given his injury. Of course, so did Drexel outside of Fouch. Kent took advantage of a crazy ending to win this game...

With 35 second left in OT, Drexel tried to dump it down low for the quick 2 and the foul (Kent missed 4 or 5 FT in OT). Chris Evans blocked the shot... right to the guy he should have been guarding at the 3 point line. Guy drains the wide open three to tie it. One of their other players must not have known it was a three, and was following the play they drew up, because he intentionally fouled Holt on the inbound with 17 seconds left. Holt made both, Drexel missed game over. Bruiser Flint looked like he was about to punch the guy who gave the foul at the end. One of the weirdest (and more entertaining) endings I've ever seen.

On a side note, the 6 kids from the Drexel Student section drowned out the Kent crowd until the last 2 minutes of regulation and OT.

Jeff McKinney
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 8:51:25 AM

JSF is right about the horrible start the MAC is off to so far. Hope that things get better as the non-conference season continues.

Waiting for this league to return to its glory days is like Linus expecting the Great Pumpkin. I anticipate it every year.

What's hard to understand is that the recruiting services think the MAC has recruited pretty well for several years in a row now. WHY is it not showing up on the court consistently?

If we could find some way to get in a stronger league, it would benefit us as we strive to become a consistent mid major power.

JSF
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 9:08:08 AM

I suppose the answer is the recruiting services were wrong. Akron has stayed strong, and Ohio has improved since the Groce hire. It remains to be seen which direction Kent is headed, but they have a history that gives them the benefit of the doubt.

The rest? Buffalo never has any depth. They'll have two or three good players and the rest might not even be average. Miami continues to fall behind because of resources, facilities, and bad luck. Toledo got wrecked by Cross. CMU and EMU were also set back by their previous coaches. Patton destroyed NIU. Hawkins has mediocrity set to simmer in Kalamazoo. And Orr has taken the wreckage of Dakich and made it worse. We've had some highly-regarded recruits come in and later transfer or get hurt. The rest just weren't that good or were ruined by poor coaches.

The Optimist
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 9:21:47 AM

Every time I think Kent is going to fall off they go and prove me wrong. The Drexel win was not pretty, but that is a very good win.

I've seen crazier things happen.

OUVan
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 9:23:16 AM

bobcat695 wrote:

It's never about the conference, only the teams. If we take care of business and lose in the tournament final we get an at large. If we stumble a bit and end up on the bubble then the rest of the MAC may come back to bite us in the arse but if we play like we are capable we will earn an at large regardless of how bad the rest of the league is.

Jeff McKinney
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 9:31:04 AM

JSF, I think you've hit on the main reason for the MAC doldrums...bad coaching, which can further be traced to bad decision making by ADs and Presidents. It's a shame that has hit so many league schools. There have been better hires in football.

We will see if the latest wave of hires...Keno Davis at Central, Cooper at Miami, etc...will turn out better than the previous wave.

Ohio69 has made a good point in the past when he said that the MAC getting screwed over by the NCAA selection committees during the late 90s through the mid 2000s hurt the league. Some coaches may have avoided the league for that reason. Plus, with basketball budgets falling behind other top mid major leagues, there is no question that has really hurt.

Would be really nice if Ohio could position itself in a more competitive league situation for basketball.

OUVan
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 10:02:52 AM

Jeff McKinney wrote:

Plus, with basketball budgets falling behind other top mid major leagues, there is no question that has really hurt.

This is by far the #1 reason the MAC fell on hard times. There were some bad coaching hires but your pool of available hires and you ability to retain the good coaches you have is directly related to the amount of money you are willing to spend. When you go cheap you get cheap.

bobcat695
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 11:03:47 AM

It's obviously way too early to have the discussion about the MAC being a two-bid league, but history tells me there is no chance. The conference RPI is going to be really low. The league looks terrible right now out of conference. We'll see how things play out, but I still believe it's cut down the nets at the Q or go to the NIT.

"You can't un-fist a fist pump." - Saul Phillips 1/24/15

OU_Country
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 11:16:29 AM

OUVan wrote:

Jeff McKinney wrote:

Plus, with basketball budgets falling behind other top mid major leagues, there is no question that has really hurt.

JSF hit my thoughts exactly with this thread. After I saw some of the scores from the weekend, I was thinking "REALLY!!??" you lost to them?

The go cheap/get cheap comment leads me to ask then, how does MAC football seem to get better coaches? It's obvious given the year the MAC as a whole is having that many programs including OUrs are on the rise. Why not hoops? It would seem basketball budgets would be smaller as a whole, and thus much easier to grow to get to a competitive level.

Ozcat
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 12:17:07 PM

bobcat695 wrote:

I'd normally agree with you. And to an extent, I still kind of do. I don't think there is any way Akron gets an at-large. CoC is not terrible, but it will still look bad to the selection committee and Akron doesn't have any major post-season success recently.

In our case, if we can end up around 26-5, with only 1-2 MAC losses, I think we'd have a pretty good shot. We need to play Memphis very well, even in a loss, and pick up a win out of UMass and Oklahoma. That kind of resume with our fresh Sweet Sixteen run might just be enough to get us the nod. (If we can get the W over Memphis, that would go a LONG way.)

Long story short: Win games.

Brian Smith (No, not that one)
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 1:42:08 PM

OU_Country wrote:

OUVan wrote:

Jeff McKinney wrote:

Plus, with basketball budgets falling behind other top mid major leagues, there is no question that has really hurt.

JSF hit my thoughts exactly with this thread. After I saw some of the scores from the weekend, I was thinking "REALLY!!??" you lost to them?

That also makes the basketball programs easier to ignore or take for granted. I thought the programs at Toledo with Joplin, Miami with Charlie, Western with Hawkins and Ohio with O'Shea got complacent, happy to log their 18 or 19 wins. i saw no effort to try to raise the bar.

Last Edited: 11/13/2012 1:42:56 PM by Brian Smith (No, not that one)

OUVan
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 2:03:35 PM

The Optimist wrote:

If Akron can turn it around and we win like I believe we can, the MAC can be a 2-bid league.

All you need is one good team to be a 2-bid league. That team would need to lose in the tournament though. The few times that we had at large worthy teams they ended up winning the tournament as well. The problem with the MAC isn't that NIU or Toledo have been horrible, it's that we haven't had one really, really good team. Kent was good for a long time but not really great. With our new financial commitment we could become that team.

OUVan
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 2:09:12 PM

OU_Country wrote:

Because we spend a lot more money relatively on football than we do basketball. I'll see if I can find where I saw this but on average we were the 10th or 11th highest budgets in football and somewhere around 17th in basketball.

The Optimist
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 2:13:15 PM

OUVan wrote:

The Optimist wrote:

If Akron can turn it around and we win like I believe we can, the MAC can be a 2-bid league.

I agree.

...

Conference RPI doesn't matter. It matters in the sense that it will hurt our 2 teams with a shot, but if Ohio is 18 and Akron is 19 in the RPI it doesn't matter if the MAC is 20th as a league. This is of course making the bold assumption that Ohio and Akron dominate, and Akron and us meet in the MACC. Akron losing to CoC hurts things. Theoretically though, if Akron is just good and we end up great, but lose to Akron in the MACC, we could have a shot.

Last Edited: 11/13/2012 3:24:59 PM by The Optimist

I've seen crazier things happen.

OUVan
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RE: Normally I'm Optimistic About This Conference...

Posted: 11/13/2012 6:18:34 PM

Jeff McKinney wrote:

Would be really nice if Ohio could position itself in a more competitive league situation for basketball.

The problem is that I don't believe a league exists right now that fits our needs for basketball and all other sports.

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