Sunday, February 12, 2012

East Mauls West....

Seems like this post has been written before....but here we go...

The East has been the dominant division in the MAC for a few years, and that was literally never more true than it was this year in cross-over games.  On one hand, the MAC has de-emphasized divisional play by making the tournament seedings "division agnostic," but on the other hand, there is a huge advantage in scheduling.  Ball State and WMU both, for example, will benefit from a second run through the (by far) weaker teams in the conference and BG, currently in the hunt for a bye, has to play Akron, Kent, OU and Buffalo.

It is what it is.  But, in a weird way, as long as the league is scheduled like this, the tournament seedings cannot be truly "division agnostic."

This year, there were 36 games....and 30 of them were won by the East.  This is the highest over the past four years.  The last three years were 27-9, 26-10 and 29-7.  Crazy....over four years, 112-32.

FWIW, there are other ways to schedule.  The Big East has more teams than the MAC and they don't use divisions.  Anyway, it is what it is...which means, we use this system, and the East continues to be much stronger than the West and it isn't close.  (I think you can argue only the Rockets are on an upward vector in the West, too, but that's for another day).

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