Briggs: Toledo, BG, and their golden opportunity in a wide-open MAC
By David Briggs / The Blade
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 21:09:57 GMT
link -- with images
If you had to choose one of the following investment strategies, would you:
A.) Give the family dog a weekly allowance to play the stock market.
B.) Wire the Nigerian prince the $10,000 he needs to transfer his riches.
C.) Gamble on the Mid-American Conference basketball race.
D.) Set your money on fire.
Yeah, same here.
I’d have Rufus ... fetch the matches.
Welcome to MACtion 2020.
As we settle in for Bowling Green-Toledo on Saturday night at Savage Arena, I would love to tell you how things will shake out for our local cagers — and everybody else in the bingo cage that is the MAC — but I have not a clue.
What else is new?
Good point.
But this time, I won’t even fake it.
Where the road to a MAC championship was once strewn with orange barrels — with Buffalo playing the role of the construction project that is supposed to last 18 months but takes five years — it is now as open as a country highway.
It is anyone’s game.
“I don’t think the league is as good as it’s been the last two years, but it’s much more competitive,” Toledo coach Tod Kowalczyk said. “It’s the most competitive league I’ve ever been a part of, as far as parity from top to bottom. I’d argue it’s got more parity this season than any league in the country, and winning our league will be as difficult as winning any in the country.”
It is all relative, of course, but the point stands.
If the since-disassembled Bulls were a generational power in winning their fourth league title in five years last season, this is the opposite extreme, with one great team yielding to a meet-me-in-the-middle, Bull-eat-Bobcat world.
Even by the usual standards of mid-major basketball — where there is often little separation among schools with similar resources — the MAC is deliciously tangled.
Everyone has at least four losses overall while eight of the dozen teams are .500 or better in league play. I could make a case for 11 of them making a run in Cleveland, with the exception of Eastern Michigan, which, naturally, will proceed to win the league. (Sorry, everyone.)
“Everybody can beat everybody,” BG coach Michael Huger said. “One through 12 doesn’t matter. Take that out of the equation. ... [The difference from one to 12] is really just a stop at one end and a bucket at the other.”
To wit, the league-favorite Falcons (14-5, 5-1) have had to pass a nightly stress test, winning four of their five league games by a possession or less.
Meanwhile, the other early conference bellwether (Akron) was picked to finish fifth ... in the MAC East. With more transfers than a Western Union branch — Akron’s top six scorers began their careers elsewhere, including star guard Loren Cristian Jackson (Long Beach State) and forward Xeyrius Williams (Dayton) — the Zips have won their five league games by an average of 20 points.
They have looked like the class of the MAC.
Well, except when they played Toledo.
Which is to say I know nothing about nothing.
The Rockets — preseason favorites to win their third straight MAC West title — have suddenly pulled us back in. After six losses in seven games, they went ahead and won two high-level road games, peeling out of the Rubber City with a 99-89 win before cruising past Ohio.
What Toledo (11-8, 3-3) lacks in depth it makes up for in its top-end talent, including the Jackson Two. Tell me Marreon — the playmaking point guard who is second in the league in scoring (18.8 points) and assists (6.2) — is not the frontrunner for MAC player of the year. Also: Keep an eye on sixth man Keshaun Saunders, a non-factor in December whose switch flipped with the calendar. The redshirt freshman is shooting 72 percent (13-for-18) from beyond the arc in conference games.
This is a Rockets team that can put it to anyone.
A team plenty capable of stringing together three good nights in Cleveland.
But then so can Bowling Green and Akron and Kent State and Buffalo and Ball State, too.
For Toledo and BG — rivals connected by I-75 and decades of March heartache — that is the wonder and opportunity but also the curse of life in the one-bid, grab bag of the MAC.
Is this the year one of them ascends to March royalty and the confetti rains?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Nor would I bet against it.
I’ve got a prince to help.