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MAC Basketball - Hot or Not
We're well into conference play and it is once again time to take a look around the Mid-American Conference to see who’s hot and who’s not.
Who's Hot
The MAC East
The divide between the MAC East and the MAC West this season is gargantuan. Save one or two games, so far this season, the East division has been playing the West. The East has 29 wins. The West still only has 9! Northern Illinois has been the only team on the other side of the conference who has been able to return serve, going 4-3 in conference playing going into Tuesday night's game.
Before play started Tuesday night, the top four teams in the MAC East; Akron, Kent State, Miami, and Ohio, were a combined 23-2. Obviously that changed as those 4 teams played one-another Tuesday night, but the fact remains, the top of the East is very strong this season.
With NCAA at-large bid chances for the MAC looking fairly dim across the conference, MAC fans should start getting ready for a couple of weeks of really exciting conference play as these teams jockey for the best possible seeds, and ultimately the MAC Championship.
Obviously, the MAC tournament is still about 6 weeks away, but imagine how exciting possible semifinal match-ups of Akron vs. Kent and Ohio vs. Miami could be. Not only are those teams looking like the best four teams in the MAC, but both sets are bitter rivals, their fans travel well, and they could result in some MAC Tourney attendance records at the Q (formerly Gund Arena) this season.
Romeo Travis - Akron
Romeo Travis started off his season a little slowly this year, save for the season opener versus over-matched Youngstown State. While Travis still poured in the points on most occasions, he averaged only 4.9 rebounds a game over his first 7 games.
Since then, not only has Travis continued to pour in the points, he’s averaging nearly 15 per game and shooting better than 52%, but he’s averaged 7.2 boards per game. Romeo Travis has gone from just scoring, to being one of the biggest scoring/rebounding threats in the conference. Since Travis shook his slow start the Zips are 8-1, and the one loss was to Clemson, by 7 points.
The Zips have been one of the most impressive teams in the MAC this season, 6-0 before play started Tuesday night. And Romeo Travis is obviously their leader on the court. When the big man can get his hands on the ball a lot, it’s really paid off for the Zips.
William Hatcher - Miami
Anybody who knew the Miami RedHawks knew that the loss of Danny Horace and Chet Mason was not going to spell doom for Charlie Coles’ bunch. This season William Hatcher has been the guy to pick up the slack. Hatcher leads Miami in points with 14.5 per game, assists with 4.4 per game, and steals with 1.4 per game.
Hatcher might be the best point guard in the league this year as he has done a magnificent job setting the tempo for the RedHawks. Also, he boasts a very impressive 1.5/1 assist to turnover ratio. Miami can thank the emergence of Tim Pollitz, Nate VanderSluis, and Doug Penno for their great record in MAC play so far this season, but none of these guys would be as good as they have been so far without Hatcher setting things up for them.
Whitney Davis - Ohio
Whitney Davis, the Ohio Bobcats guard and 6 th man, has probably been the most consistent player on the Bobcats this season, at least over the past 3 or 4 weeks. He’s probably not the most talented player on a team with players like Leon Williams, Jeremy Fears, Mychal Green, and Sonny Troutman, but Davis is probably the reason that the Bobcats can boast an 11-3 record going into play Tuesday night.
Since the beginning of MAC play, Davis has been the X-factor. He’s an underrated, strong defender, he can handle the ball, make the entry pass, and he can definitely score. Since the beginning of MAC play, Davis has been averaging 13.3 points a contest. Not too bad for a player who rarely got a sniff of the court last season.
Who's Not
The Buffalo Bulls
If you checked out the VanDelay Sports power rankings, you’re already aware, Central Michigan beat Buffalo, in Buffalo. Just to put things in perspective in case you haven’t seen them yet this season, CMU may be one of the most inept teams in MAC history, due to scores of transfers over the past few seasons. As hot as the Bulls were during the last edition of “Hot or Not”, they’ve been that cold since.
Buffalo started out hot this season going 10-1, on what some critics called a steady diet of cupcakes. Buffalo is giving credence to the critics, already dropping 3 games in Mid-American Conference play. The Bulls have shown that they are better than this, and they probably are just going through a rough spot, but until they put that CMU game far, far into our memories, they need to be planted squarely on the “Not” list.
Stan Joplin
Move over Jay Smith, Stan Joplin is the latest member of what I like to call the “Resume Watch”, deduce from that what you will. It seems like every season in the MAC there is a team picked to win its division who stumbles badly. This season, that team is Toledo. The Rockets haven’t just been disappointing so far this season, they’ve been summarily terrible, and at some point the blame has got to fall on Joplin.
Toledo was picked to win the West, and some would say the entire MAC, last season as well, and they under-achieved badly. Some insiders to the program believed that Keith Triplett might have brought a less than impressive work ethic and attitude last season, and that things might improve with his graduation. News flash. Things have not improved. If Joplin can’t turn this mess around soon, it probably will cost him his job this off-season.
Joe Lunardi & ESPN.com's Bracketology
If you’re not familiar with Bracketology, it is an ESPN.com feature that projects the 65 teams who will make the NCAA tournament in March, according to Joe Lunardi, a writer at ESPN. This week Akron is the newest team to walk through the revolving door into Lunardi’s bracket. So far this season Akron, Buffalo, Ohio, Miami, and Northern Illinois have all been represented, at different times.
The problem with Bracketology isn’t the constant turnover of MAC Teams; that’s understandable since the conference has so much parity, especially this season. The problem with this week’s Bracketology specifically is that Lunardi has Akron, the only MAC representative slotted in as the 14-seed in the tournament.
The 14-seed!?! I realize that the conference has a lot of parity this season, but that is just ridiculous. To put things into perspective the other projected 14 seeds are UC Irvine, Penn, and Northwestern State. Lunardi has conferences like the Sun Belt, Big South, WAC, Mountain West, and MAAC getting better bids than the MAC. This is a slap in the face of this highly competitive conference. Hopefully, a top team can win the tournament in Cleveland, and Laing Kennedy’s presence on the selection committee can keep the MAC from being totally jobbed like Lunardi is projecting. |
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By Dan Whitmyer, VanDelaySports.com Head Basketball Writer
published 01.24.06
