Divisions are fine,great for rivalries , but a division winner needs to be guaranteed a top 2 seed. Go back to the old format

(01-31-2020 08:12 PM)MaddDawgz02 Wrote:  Divisions are fine,great for rivalries , but a division winner needs to be guaranteed a top 2 seed. Go back to the old format

Year after year the top teams have been in the East, and East teams almost always win the tourney. East teams play the tougher league schedules, if they can still manage to get the top two seeds, it seems unfair to take that away. You could easily argue that the top 4 teams are in the East this year.

The rivalries exist whether there are divisions or not. Really has no effect on them.

(01-31-2020 09:30 PM)axeme Wrote:  The rivalries exist whether there are divisions or not. Really has no effect on them.

It might not affect Akron and Kent rivalry, but it sure would affect other rivalries. If the division winners are guaranteed a top 2 seed, the division win means so much more, and thus a much more interesting divisional race. That only helps rivalries with higher stakes inside the division. It just makes no sense to not reward division winners if you have a division format. The current format is fine, but if you do that, just take away the division and make the scheduling more balanced.

There is no way of making the schedule balanced unless they add more conference games. There will always be some team that gets an easier schedule and another which gets a more challenging one. Personally, I want to see Akron continuing to play Kent, Buffalo, and Ohio 2x per year. If they scrap divisions, that probably wouldn't happen.

The MAC use to give the top 2 seeds to divisional winners. As Dick mentioned, the East already plays a more challenging schedule. If an East team still is able to finish with a top 2 record, they deserve the seed. I honestly don't see what's the big deal about divisions. Even the NBA divisions are pretty meaningless.

(02-01-2020 08:24 AM)kreed5120 Wrote:  There is no way of making the schedule balanced unless they add more conference games. There will always be some team that gets an easier schedule and another which gets a more challenging one. Personally, I want to see Akron continuing to play Kent, Buffalo, and Ohio 2x per year. If they scrap divisions, that probably wouldn't happen.

The MAC use to give the top 2 seeds to divisional winners. As Dick mentioned, the East already plays a more challenging schedule. If an East team still is able to finish with a top 2 record, they deserve the seed. I honestly don't see what's the big deal about divisions. Even the NBA divisions are pretty meaningless.

Well of course it will be unbalanced but to rotate through teams you play twice makes so much more sense. Why have more division games if division games are meaningless in the current format?

Who wants the schedule to be more balanced? As a UB fan, I'd prefer a 3rd game with Akron, Kent and Ohio than any 2nd game vs a western team. Leave the divisions alone.

(02-01-2020 02:01 PM)UB2000 Wrote:  Who wants the schedule to be more balanced? As a UB fan, I'd prefer a 3rd game with Akron, Kent and Ohio than any 2nd game vs a western team. Leave the divisions alone.

Go down to 16 with more scheduling flexibility then.

(02-01-2020 05:14 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(02-01-2020 02:01 PM)UB2000 Wrote:  Who wants the schedule to be more balanced? As a UB fan, I'd prefer a 3rd game with Akron, Kent and Ohio than any 2nd game vs a western team. Leave the divisions alone.

Go down to 16 with more scheduling flexibility then.

Why?

Go to 16 games and 10 games within divison and 6 vs other division.

Otherwise why have divisions if they don't have any real ramifications.

(02-01-2020 05:14 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(02-01-2020 02:01 PM)UB2000 Wrote:  Who wants the schedule to be more balanced? As a UB fan, I'd prefer a 3rd game with Akron, Kent and Ohio than any 2nd game vs a western team. Leave the divisions alone.

Go down to 16 with more scheduling flexibility then.

Fewer MAC games gives you less flexibility in scheduling MAC games, not more. As for non-conference, MAC schools already have too much dead weight on the schedules, and they don’t need more.

I wonder if a 22 game MAC round robin schedule would make our SOS better. The league rests between 100-200 RPI, NET, BPI whatever... That's better than playing Howard and Any D2 school on your schedule? The MAC would just have to ramp up the other 8 games OOC, or not load them with more crap teams.

Every schedule has its plusses and minuses. With 22 conference games, conference play would have to start at least in mid-December. That’s even more games with schools out of session.

Beating teams 100-200 isn't going to get you resume building wins. You need Q1 & Q2 wins to get an at-large. The fewer OOC games you play, the less opportunities you have to get those wins. The NCAA would need to allow teams to play another 2-3 games per year before I'd support a 22 game conference schedule.

And you have no chance if you fill your empty slots with perennial 300+ and lower division teams. Weed out the gimme games and you could have whatever number of conference games you want. Not going to happen, of course, with coaches looking to pad their win totals.

(02-02-2020 12:21 AM)axeme Wrote:  And you have no chance if you fill your empty slots with perennial 300+ and lower division teams. Weed out the gimme games and you could have whatever number of conference games you want. Not going to happen, of course, with coaches looking to pad their win totals.

Yes, but at least an opportunity exists for a coach to schedule aggressively enough to build a solid resume. Whether they choose to do so or not is a completely different discussion.

A 22 game conference schedule means you only play 8-9 OOC games. 3-4 of those are going to be part of some exempt tournament. That leaves you with just 5 games that you would actually schedule.

Doesn't the MAC require a minimum of 15 home games? If that is true..........Going to 22 conference games would force teams to have at least 4 home games out of 8-9 OOC games, which again will be filled by a D2 or 300+ teams. If the MAC would knock that down to 13-14 or maybe allow a couple neutral to cancel out a true home game, it might be workable.

(02-01-2020 02:01 PM)UB2000 Wrote:  Who wants the schedule to be more balanced? As a UB fan, I'd prefer a 3rd game with Akron, Kent and Ohio than any 2nd game vs a western team. Leave the divisions alone.

That's fine but then please make the division play worth something huge rewarding the division winner

My point in originating this thread was to question why we are the ONLY conference in the D1 nation that has two divisions in basketball. Not that long ago the MAC used to be closer to Big Ten quality than it is now. Unless CMU surprisingly ascends this year, clearly the four best teams in the league will reside in the East Division. We have seen teams in this league hang Division Championship banners with a 9-7 conference record and that is clearly unproductive with respect to improving the conference.

I live in Ann Arbor and sports talk radio disparaging referenced the recent Rutgers-Michigan game as a "MAC" game. It has been over twenty years since the MAC had more than one entry into the NCAA tournament. Rewarding less than stellar performance with a championship banner allows poor coaches to hang around and MAC schools to be the "kings of nothing". It is counterintuitive to think that the MAC would be closer to Power 5 quality in football than in basketball due to the numerical difference in (22 vs 5 starters) manpower requirements but that is what has happened.

(01-31-2020 09:39 PM)MaddDawgz02 Wrote:  

(01-31-2020 09:30 PM)axeme Wrote:  The rivalries exist whether there are divisions or not. Really has no effect on them.

It might not affect Akron and Kent rivalry, but it sure would affect other rivalries. If the division winners are guaranteed a top 2 seed, the division win means so much more, and thus a much more interesting divisional race. That only helps rivalries with higher stakes inside the division. It just makes no sense to not reward division winners if you have a division format. The current format is fine, but if you do that, just take away the division and make the scheduling more balanced.

I would say division winner is guaranteed a Top 4 seed, but can get a top 2 seed if it beats cross-division winner during the regular season.

I don't see rewarding a team who won its division, but clearly ins't as good as 2-3 (even 4) teams in the other division. That's punishing the better teams in the conference. That seems very counter-productive. The whole point of seeds is to marginally protect the better teams to give them a better chance of representing the conference in the NCAA. You want to reward the third, fourth, or fifth best team because it had a better record than other weaker teams, then give them a nice banner and a handshake. (I don't think a school hanging a meaningless banner has any effect on the rest of the conference. Who even pays attention to what lower tier banners any school hangs?)