March 15th,
2006
By
CRS Staff
So
with Kent State securing the MAC Conference's only men's NCAA bid, they now head to Detroit to play Pittsburgh.
Let's analyze this matchup featuring a Cleveland-area team. Between the Browns crushing home defeat to the Lions
last October, the Pistons skull cracking beat-down (twice) of the young and vulnerable Cavaliers this February,
and the Steelers domination of the Browns (also twice) last season, culminating in a Super Bowl victory in,
you guessed it....DETROIT, The Detroit-Pittsburgh-Cleveland combination has been like a sudden Bermuda triangle of sorts
for our teams. Just thought we'd point that out, and yes, for the record we don't expect this one to end well either.
UPDATE: Yep, didn't end well. Sorry Kent, it was just your NE Ohio destiny.
MAC
Tourney Wrap-Up
March 15th, 2006
By CRS Staff
OK, so I'm not going to brag about my perfect 7-0 record in predicting the Cleveland-portion of the MAC Tournament (including upsets by #7 seed Toledo over #2 Northern
Illinois & #3 Akron, along with #5 Ohio U's minor upset of #4 Miami). Nope, not gonna say anything about it.
OK, maybe I just did. Bragging aside, some observations of three days of MAC basketball at The Q (in no particular order):
-
Akron and its roster of former
Lebronnaires is still not quite ready for prime-time (come to think of it, neither is the real LeBron's team)
-
"Kent Read, Kent State" is a pretty clever comeback (saw
this on a sign in the Kent student cheering section)
-
Who needs Marshall? (9th in C-USA this year, 12-16 overall
record)
-
The MAC needs to learn how to manipulate RPI like the other
mid-majors (see Mo Valley), or else in 10 years the MAC tourney champion will be playing Savannah State in the #64
v #65 play-in game
-
I think Charlie Coles may have actually passed away after
the 1999 Wally Szczerbiak-led season, and his corpse has been coaching Miami for the last 7 years
Other than Toledo there really weren't a lot of surprises
this year, with all high seeds advancing to Cleveland, and no team other than the Rockets pulled off an upset win over a team
with a seed more than one slot above them. In other words, it was sort of boring, but in the end at least the best
team won.
