2004 MAC Madness
Having just
watched the NCAA Basketball Selection Show and seeing the MAC get the short end of the stick again with only one participant,
the thrill of seeing my alma mater, Ohio University, get into the Tournament is now somewhat diminished. Not that
I was surprised, mind you, as I knew only OU would be dancing next Thursday or Friday as soon as Leon Williams hit the biggest
tap-in since the Jeff Boals era of Bobcat basketball (OK, OK, so maybe it was really the Gary Trent
era...doesn't he play in Europe now or something? I digress.).
Before anyone
goes out and torches the NCAA Selection Committee Chairman's house, or starts throwing objects at the screen while some CBS
analyst waxes poetic about why the Big East should've got all 12 teams in, consider one idea - that maybe the MAC is its own
worst enemy.
I compare
the MAC in Basketball to what the Big Ten was in Football for many years. Every year the top 5 or 6 football
teams in the Big Ten beat the hell out of each other every week, while teams like Nebraska & Oklahoma seemed to be
in competition to schedule the worst teams in Division I. Inevitably each team in the Big Ten would stumble at least
once, leaving the door ajar for members of the other power conferences to skip into the mythical NCAA Championship
Game seemingly every year. Sound familiar?
To illustrate my point, let's compare the University of Buffalo
& Miami of Ohio to one team that did make the big dance as an at-large (and at a higher seed than the Bobcats), Northern
Iowa. The mighty Panthers of UNI, a directional school from the Missouri Valley Conference (which sent three teams to
the NCAA, by the way), finished at 21-10, 11-7 in their conference. They were the 4th seed in their conference tourney,
losing in the quarterfinals to Southwest Missouri State (now THAT'S a directional school...). The regular-season
MVC Champion, Southern Illinois, also earned an at-large bid.
Now let's talk about the MAC bubble teams. Miami finished
at 12-6 in the conference, while UB finished at 11-7. Each made it to the semifinals of their conference, and each had
some decent non-conference wins. Why did neither likely get serious consideration for an at-large? Because the
MAC HAD SEVEN FREAKIN TEAMS FINISH AT 11-7 OR BETTER! By comparison, only 4 teams from the MVC met this criteria.
If you're the NCAA Tournament Committee, who would you take as your at-large bid from the MAC when nobody really stood out?
Exactly. Take Miami when they stumbled into the regular-season championship and lost in the semis? Um, no.
Take Buffalo, who lost all three games to Tournament winner Ohio? I don't think so. Or maybe Western Michigan,
on the strength of winning the West division? Dickie V. might even be rendered speechless trying to argue for that.
So unless the MAC becomes a power conference where half its teams
become tournament-worthy (an event as likely to happen as all three Cleveland teams winning a world championship in the same
calendar year), you can expect only the tournament winner to walk out of Gund Arena feeling like they've done enough to get
in. Oh well, it's probably for the best I guess. After all, who needs the NCAA's when you can play Western Kentucky
in the NIT.
