Posts Tagged ‘Northern Illinois’

Pound-for-pound, Ricardo Patton’s Northern Illinois Huskies might be the most talented team in the MAC. There’s little doubt that junior guard/wings Darion “Jake” Anderson and Xavier Silas are two of the more explosive players on the offensive side of the court in the MAC. While not among the league’s best soph point Mike [...]

To anyone that had the misfortune of being at Rose Arena tonight for Central Michigan playing host to Ball State. I didn’t see the game, but the final box yields me to conclude that the Chippewas’ 53-38 win set basketball back about 3000 years. The ancient Mayan ballgame had to have more artistry [...]

The big question about the MAC West this season is whether anyone other than those with a close — i.e. friends and family — relationship to coaches and players in the league should really care what happens. And, to be honest, I don’t know that anybody else should. The six sides in [...]

Despite what Nate Linhart’s over the top WWE-worthy acting job might make you think:
The 2009 MAC tournament tips off today with four games, featuring teams seeded 5 through 12. We’re going to pick the winners in each of those four games.
Game 1: #7 Central Michigan (7-9, 11-18) vs #10 Eastern Michigan (6-10, 8-23)
Vegas [...]

Please, someone, put the MAC West out of it’s misery. The six teams that did their level best (or is it worst) to drag the entire league out of Mid-Majordom and into Low-Majordom — Ken Pomeroy ranks the MAC 18th overall, percentage points above the Southland — went at it tonight. While the [...]

Buffalo’s nine-game winning streak ground to a halt in Muncie today, as Ball State held off the Bulls 53-51 in a low-scoring, MAC dogfight. This was just one of those games where the Bulls weren’t able to survive a rare off game from Rodney Pierce, nor overcome missed freebies and missed blockouts down the [...]

Another night and another pair of crushing routs for the MAC West sides in cross-division play.
Miami (6-2, 13-7) dismantled Ball State (5-3, 10-10), the West’s best team, 59-41, in a game that I thought would be a lot closer. Instead, it seems that the Cardinals couldn’t handle Michael Bramos — few teams in the [...]

Based on today’s losses, the MAC could find itself sitting 16th or 17th one the rankings are updated. That isn’t the stuff multiple Big Dance bids are made of.

In fact, at this point in the season, we can look at the field of 65, and, with almost absolute certainty, say that only the MAC tournament champion will be repping the conference in that field.

It’s not that every team is scheduling like Charlie Coles and, predictably, losing to teams they should lose to. MAC teams are losing games they can and should probably win.

After starting MAC play 0-8 and not having won a road game since dinosaurs roamed the earth, UB (7-14, 1-8) got it going tonight in DeKalb, leading by double digits most of the game, as they cruised to a 89-81 win over the Northern Illinois Huskies (5-16, 2-7).

At first, I wasn’t going to make too much about Buffalo’s tonight because NIU is a truly terrible team but then I decided that, hell yeah, this is a huge win for coach ‘Spoon’s side. So pardon me while I get bit carried away.

What can we say about the MAC West other than that it’s made less sense than a Matthew Barney flick — yeah, that’s right, I called the Cremaster Cycle a flick — since league play started? Perhaps, this hump day’s results have helped things to make at least some semblance of sense.
Pre-season West faves [...]