Link to to kenpom.com blog 

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This is part two of my look at every conference race using a Monte Carlo and my current ratings for each team. The listed numbers are how many simulations each team won out of 10000, so divide that number by 100 to get the percent chance I am giving each team of winning the one-seed for its conference tournament. (Note: not all teams listed are eligible for their conference tournament, so in some cases it’s a mythical one-seed.) If a team isn’t listed, I didn’t forget about them - they didn’t win a single simulation.

Conferences are ordered from least to most competitive. I’ll tackle the ten-most competitive conference races in the final part tomorrow. The following results include all games played through yesterday.

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19. MAC

The pick: Toledo. The Rockets’ unbeaten run ended at Kansas on Monday night, but their streak of scoring at least 1.08 PPP in every game didn’t.

The contrarian pick: Eastern Michigan. Rob Murphy’s team has been the surprise of the conference so far, and convincing wins over Green Bay and Cleveland State are solid evidence that they’ll win a few games in league play.

Toledo                 5087

Ohio                   2264

Akron                   818

Eastern Michigan        573

Western Michigan        440

Buffalo                 403

Kent St.                334

Bowling Green            64

Miami OH                 13

Ball St.                  4

Northern Illinois         2

points per possession?

I am curious how these numbers would play out if we could isolate the fact that our divisional crossover opponents rank #1 and #4 in this simulation while Toledo's are #2 and #8 (bg)

Toledo 5087
Ohio 2264
Akron 818
Eastern Michigan 573
...
Bowling Green 64


No doubt about it, the fact that we got the West's two best teams as divisional doubles is a bummer but I think this team is up for it. Hopefully MAC play goes more like Richmond and less like Oakland.

A birdie to open at Kent would be HUGE.

I agree with borna, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. Good battles in conference toughen you up for tournament time, and we are always complaining about the west tanking our RPI... Well, on that front, we have the right teams doubled up.

As good as Toledo has been on offense they have been nearly as bad on defense.  They are #254 in defensive PPP at 1.071.  In contrast we are #51 at 0.934.   Their perimeter defense has been horrid with teams shooting over 40% from three against them.  But their offensive metrics are absurdly good.  They play at a high tempo and don't turn the ball over (10th nationally in turnover %).