Why Michigan's three teams will have a lot less MAC-tion in March
While most of Michigan’s college basketball teams are gearing up for a busy March, the state’s three men’s teams in the Mid-American Conference will be strictly one-and-done, regardless of their outcomes.
Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan will all be done for the season following their final regular-season games on Tuesday. The three teams combined for just seven wins in conference play, with all three also suffering multiple postponements due to COVID-19 issues.
The MAC’s new conference tournament format, adopted in May to cut costs during the coronavirus pandemic, features just eight teams making the trip to Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, cutting previous years’ first-round games at conference sites.
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Seven teams had locked up spots in Cleveland entering Saturday, and Ball State’s 97-91 win over CMU locked up a spot for the Cardinals. Both tournaments start March 11 and wrap up March 13, one day before the men’s NCAA tournament field is announced and two days before the women’s field is announced.
CMU (6-15, 2-12 MAC) and EMU (5-11, 2-10) can still play a part in setting up the conference tournament, however, with their games scheduled for Tuesday; the Chips will face Toledo (19-6, 14-3), which can lock up the No. 1 seed with a win at 5 p.m. in Mount Pleasant, while the Eagles will host Ball State (9-11, 7-8), currently in the No. 8 spot at 7 p.m. WMU (4-15, 3-11), meanwhile, is set to finish up against Northern Illinois (2-15, 1-11), the other team missing out on the tournament.
On the women’s side, CMU and EMU appear likely to make the eight-team field headed to Cleveland; the Chips are 11-6 in conference play and enter Wednesday’s 7 p.m. regular-season finale at Ball State in third place in the standings, while the Eagles are 7-6 in league play and in seventh place entering Wednesday’s 7 p.m. finale against eighth-place Northern Illinois. The WMU women, however, sit in 10th place with a 5-12 record headed into Wednesday’s 1 p.m. home game vs. ninth-place Toledo.
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Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @theford.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan in MAC basketball: CMU, EMU, WMU all miss out on tournament
