MAC Sports Blog by VanDelay Sports

While it will be another one bid year for the MAC, a conference that has just one NCAA Tournament win in the last decade, the owners of that win seem to have played themselves into a better seed. While ESPN’s Joe Lunardi originally projected Akron as a #14 seed, with Ohio winning and the owners of a 27-7 record the projections now show the MAC Champion as a #13 seed. This means Ohio Bobcat fans are more likely to have to travel farther as Portland hosts two 4/13 games, Albuquerque one 4/13 game and Nashville the other 2012 NCAA Tournament site. Of course the Bobcats nearly upset Florida in a 4/13 game in 2005 in Nashville with a comeback that CBS Sports took off the air only to have to come back to after Ohio tied the game late. The Bobcats, who upset Georgetown in a 3/14 game in 2010, will look to pickup their second NCAA Tournament win in three years this season.

VanDelay Sports is a MAC sports fan site covering MAC football & basketball online at VanDelaySports.com since 2000. A member of the MAC News Media Association, fans can follow on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

The 2012 MAC Tournament Championship Game will tip off tonight at 8 pm featuring a rematch of the 2010 MAC Championship as the #1 Akron Zips face the #3 Ohio Bobcats. Both teams completed a 3-0 sweep of the semifinal opponents with Akron topping Kent State and Ohio knocking off Buffalo to earn the Saturday night, ESPN2 televised contest. Akron enters as the #1 seed at 22-10, 13-3 MAC and RPI #52 while Ohio, the #3 seed in the Tournament is 26-7, 11-5 MAC, RPI #60. The winner will earn a berth in the 2012 NCAA Tournament with Joe Lunardi projecting yesterday the MAC Champion as a #14 seed facing #3 Michigan and playing in Columbus, Ohio. VanDelay Sports will be Tweeting live court side from the MAC Tournament. Visit us online and check out the MAC Tournament scores on VanDelaySports.com and follow us on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

Ohio is your winner in a thriller 64-63 and heads to the 2012 NCAA Tournament. DJ Cooper (Ohio) gets the MAC Tournament MVP award with Nick Kellogg (Ohio), Alex Abreu (Akron), Justin Greene (Kent State) and Mitchell Watt (Buffalo) joining him on the All-MAC Tournament team.

VanDelay Sports is a MAC sports fan site covering MAC football & basketball online at VanDelaySports.com since 2000. A member of the MAC News Media Association, fans can follow on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

#2 Buffalo faces #3 Ohio in the nightcap of two Friday night games in the 2012 MAC Tournament on SportsTime Ohio. VanDelay Sports will be Tweeting live court side from the MAC Tournament. Visit us online and check out the MAC Tournament scores on VanDelaySports.com and follow us on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

Ohio tops Buffalo 77-74 holding on despite Buffalo having several chances in the final 30 seconds to tie to game.

All-MAC Tournament Team Watch: Mitchell Watt is a beast. He gets my vote for the All-MAC Tournament team no matter how tomorrow plays out. DJ Cooper is the leading guy for Ohio but Keely and Baltic could get votes with big games and an Ohio win on Saturday night.

#1 Akron faces #4 Kent State in the first of two Friday night games in the 2012 MAC Tournament on SportsTime Ohio. VanDelay Sports will be Tweeting live court side from the MAC Tournament. Visit us online and check out the MAC Tournament scores on VanDelaySports.com and follow us on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

Akron is your winner 78-74 as they hold on for the win despite a run by Kent State in the closing minute.

All-MAC Tournament Team Watch: Nick Cvetinovic is the player of the game with 15 points, 4 boards but another solid game from Justin Greene of Kent State keeps him in the running for one of the 5 All-MAC Tournament Team spots. Greene finished with 20 points and 8 rebounds after leading Kent to victory last night. Michael Porrini and Randall Holt also played major rolls in keeping Kent in the game with Porrini having a nice 11 point, 6 rebound, 9 assist night. Akron’s standard balanced attack saw Alex Abreu score 13 points with 4 assists and 2 steals and Zeke Marshall finish with 8 points and 8 rebounds.

#3 Ohio faces #7 Toledo in the nightcap of two Thursday night games in the 2012 MAC Tournament on SportsTime Ohio. VanDelay Sports will provide a live in-game blog while also Tweeting live court side from the MAC Tournament. Visit us online and check out the MAC Tournament scores on VanDelaySports.com and follow us on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

Keep up with us on Twitter @VanDelaySports as technical difficulties are making the live blog rather difficult to maintain efficiently.

All-MAC Tournament Team Watch: With Baltic having a rough night offensively in Ohio’s 65-57 win, the lone Ohio player worth of mention thus far is DJ Cooper. A hot game by anyone can change that tomorrow night, but keep an eye on Cooper for now.

#4 Kent State faces #8 Western Michigan in the first of two Thursday night games in the 2012 MAC Tournament on SportsTime Ohio. VanDelay Sports will provide a live in-game blog while also Tweeting live court side from the MAC Tournament. Visit us online and check out the MAC Tournament scores on VanDelaySports.com and follow us on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

Probable starters for Kent State: Porrini, Holt, Guyton, Manns and Greene. probable starters for WMU: Ward, Douglas, Pokley, Whitfield and Stainbrook.

13-6 Kent State leads at the first media timeout with Greene leading with 4 points. Poring dives into the crowd and comes up lame with the trainers seemingly focused on his right hamstring. As a big piece of the Kent State puzzle he’d be a huge loss if he cannot continue. At the second media time out at 10:46 Kent leads 22-14. After the timeout Porrini is back on the court as we go under the 10 minute mark. With 3 pts and 3 ast in 6 minutes he is showing his value to the team. Just under 9 minutes and Demitrius Ward picks up his second foul.

35-30 is our halftime score. Due to technical difficulties please follow @VanDelaySports on Twitter for updates. Moments after tweeting that WMU’s Matt Stainbrook was getting out hustled on both ends of the court, he gets called for a ridiculous Flagrant 2 leading to his ejection. Objectively speaking this is a terrible call and with under 8 minutes to play and Kent State up 19 this game is over.

WMU makes a ridiculous comeback to cut the lead to as little as 3 and Kent holds on, almost miraculously. Kent tried to give this one away and continued to shoot themselves in the foot as they survive and advance 76-72. Kent faces Akron at 7 on Friday night in the semifinals.

All-MAC Tournament Team Watch: With Kent advancing it seems safe to say none of the WMU players will make the All-MAC Tournament team. Not a single player stood out statistically. From Kent State Justin Greene scored 23 with 9 boards and 4 assists while Michael Porrini returned from in-game injury to score 10 with 8 assists and 6 rebounds.

The MAC men’s basketball tournament may have a new format in 2012, but that does not take anything away from the prize on the line - a berth into the 2012 NCAA Tournament. Two team advanced to the quarterfinals of the 2012 MAC Tournament as both Toledo and Western Michigan both advanced in Cleveland on Wednesday night. The seeding held true in this round following Central Michigan and Northern Illinois’ opening round upsets, as #8 WMU earns a match-up with #4 Kent State and #7 Toledo will face #3 Ohio in the nightcap. #1 Akron and #2 Buffalo await the winners of the Thursday games with the NCAA Tournament dream in the backs of each player’s head.

#7 Western Michigan topped #12 Northern Illinois with ease in a 71-54 blowout to start the night on SportsTime Ohio. Mike Douglas paced the Broncos with 19 points and Flenard Whitfield’s foul trouble may be a blessing in disguise as he should remain fairly fresh for the game with Kent State after playing just 20 minutes due to foul trouble.

#7 Toledo improved to 18-15 on the year as Rian Pearson’s 20 points led all players in scoring en route to a 75-72 win over #11 seed Central Michigan. The Rockets held off CMU’s comeback bid and will face #3 Ohio in Thursday’s late game as they look to top the Bobcats (24-7) for the second time this season.

All-MAC Tournament Team Watch: Rian Pearson had 20 points, 15 boards and 2 steals to lead Toledo to the win after 21 pts, 13 reb and 2 steals against Miami. Outside of falling on his face against Ohio he may likely have a spot on the 2012 All-MAC Tournament Team.

VanDelay Sports is a MAC sports fan site covering MAC football & basketball online at VanDelaySports.com since 2000. A member of the MAC News Media Association, fans can follow on Twitter @VanDelaySports.

The 2011 MAC East Division Champions are the Ohio Bobcats. Ohio, winners of the MAC East for the 3rd time in 6 years, defeated Bowling Green tonight on the leg of kicker Matt Weller’s 5 field goals including the game winner with 2 seconds to go. Ohio, who trailed much of the second half, trailed 28-19 early in the 4th quarter but was able to score the final 10 points of the game to win the MAC East with a week to go in the regular season. Ohio (8-3, 5-2 MAC) hosts rival Miami (4-7, 3-4 MAC) on Tuesday, November 22nd on ESPN2 to close the regular season. The Bobcats own wins over both Temple and Kent State, the lone two teams with 3 losses remaining in the MAC East.

Ohio’s opponent in the MAC Football Championship Game is still to be determined, but the Northern Illinois Huskies (8-3, 6-1 MAC) control their own destiny needing only a home win over Eastern Michigan (6-4, 4-2 MAC) on Friday, November 25th on ESPNU to advance to the title game or a loss by Toledo in one of their final two games. NIU seeks their 3rd appearance in the MAC Championship in 7 years having lost in 2005 to Akron and last season to Miami.The MAC Championship Game will take place at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan on Friday, December 2nd at 7 pm ET.

Both Ohio and the winner of the MAC West will receive bowl game bids per the MAC’s bowl tie-ins with Ohio currently looking at the GoDaddy.com Bowl per the latest bowl game predictions. The other MAC teams that made the bowl projections include Toledo and Northern Illinois while Temple, Western Michigan and Ball State are all bowl eligible. In addition, Eastern Michigan and Kent State both can become bowl eligible with EMU needing a single win and Kent State in need of two wins in their final two games to finish 6-6.

Another week of mid-week games on the ESPN family of networks has passed and offense is the keyword again this week. A week after NIU defeated Toledo 63-60, the Tuesday night match-up of Western Michigan @ Toledo did not disappoint as it exceeded the extreme numbers of the week prior. Toledo ended up on the winning side this time as they won 66-63 scoring more points than any MAC football game in conference history. The same night Northern Illinois had no trouble on the road defeating Bowling Green 45-14 before Wednesday night’s “defensive battle” featured a Temple win over Miami 24-21. Finally, Thursday night’s ESPNU game featured East Division leading Ohio @ Central Michigan and while the Chippewas tried to keep it close, the Bobcats scored a 43-28 win.

While two games remain to be played on Saturday with Buffalo @ Eastern Michigan and Kent State @ Akron, the teams fighting for a spot in the MAC Football Championship Game have already played. In the West Division, NIU’s win keeps them in control of their own destiny as they will take the MAC West if they win out. Toledo remains tied at 5-1 in MAC play with Ball State 4-2. Meanwhile, in the East Division, the Ohio Bobcats are now 4-2 in the MAC leading 4-3 Temple by a half game as well as 3-3 Miami. Like NIU, if Ohio can win out they will also be playing for the MAC title in Detroit.

After a 4-1 start, the Ohio Bobcats looked like the team to beat in the MAC East this season. But consecutive losses at Buffalo and at home to Ball State on Homecoming gave the Bobcats two MAC losses and if not for a little luck with Temple, Miami, Bowling Green and the rest of the East struggling, Ohio would have found themselves in real trouble.

Heading into tonight’s game against Temple on ESPN, the Bobcats sat at 5-3, 2-2 MAC and tied in the loss column with fellow favorite Temple as well as Miami. But with their 35-31 win in prime time which eventually led SportsCenter, the Ohio Bobcats now control their own destiny in the MAC East with the road to the MAC Football Championship Game clear in front of Ohio. If the Bobcats can win on the road @ Central Michigan and @ Bowling Green, the November 22 game with the Miami RedHawks could be the deciding factor in the MAC East race and who goes to the MAC Championship Game in Detroit.