Opening night tonight. All game times listed are in Eastern Time. Included spreads when available.

Monday 11/8
No Games

Tuesday 11/9
Akron +16.5 @ Ohio State - 6 PM [ESPN2]
Eastern Michigan +24.5 @ Indiana - 6 PM [BTN]
Ohio +3.5 vs. Belmont - 7 PM [ESPN+]
Ball State +2.5 @ Georgia Southern - 7PM [ESPN+]
Toledo -4.5 @ Valparaiso - 7 PM [ESPN+]
Miami (OH) +10 @ Georgia Tech - 7:30 PM [ACCNX / ESPN+]
Bowling Green -9 @ Western Carolina - 7:30 PM [ESPN+]
Central Michigan +17 @ Missouri - 8 PM [SEC+ / ESPN+]
Northern Illinois +18.5 @ Washington - 10 PM [PAC12 Network]

Wednesday 11/10
Buffalo +13.5 @ Michigan - 6:30 PM [BTN]
Western Michigan vs. Hope - 7 PM [ESPN3]

Thursday 11/11
No Games

Friday 11/12
Eastern Michigan -1 vs. Illinois State - 6 PM [ESPN3]
Kent State +8 @ Xavier - 6:30 PM [FS1]
Western Michigan +24.5 @ Michigan State - 6:30 PM [BTN]
Bowling Green NL vs. Ohio Wesleyan - 7 PM [No TV Listed]
Northern Illinois +25 @ Indiana - 7 PM [BTN+]

Saturday 11/13
Ball St. -10.5 vs. Omaha - 12 PM [ESPN3]
Miami (OH) -12 vs. Lamar - 2 PM [ESPN3]
Central Michigan +14.5 @ DePaul - 6 PM [FS2]
Toledo -8.5 vs. Detroit Mercy - 7 PM [ESPN3]
Akron NL vs. Point Park - 7 PM [ESPN3]
Ohio -1.5 @ Cleveland State - 7 PM [ESPN+]

Sunday 11/14
No Games

Miami knocks off Georgia Tech! That's the best win for the Redhawks in a very, very long time.

Woof. That is a putrid loss for BG.

Eastern and Central sure made the most of their house money.

Yes a very solid opening for the MAC. The conference may get some love this year. Perhaps some players opting to come back with another year of Covid Eligibility might give some teams a real cohesive feel that they might ordinarily not have. In the prediction thread, earlier in the week I predicted both the Bobcats and the Bulls in the Sweet 16, if Akron keeps playing as it did tonight might have to make an addendum.

This I did not expect!!!

Wow what an opening night for the MAC!

Miami (@ Georgia Tech)
Toledo (@ Valparaiso)
NIU (@ Washington)
Ohio (Belmont)

All with REALLY impressive wins.

Then Akron and EMU losing squeakers on the road to Ohio St (by 1) and Indiana (by 6) respectively.

How often can we tout two P5 (and almost 4) victories in addition to beating one of the best mid-majors in the same night?

Even CMU hanging within 10 on the road of Missouri.

Of course the flip side to that is BG and Ball St with two ugly losses to Western Carolina and Georgia Southern.

WOW what a night! If you had bet all MAC teams you would've went 7-2 in Vegas last night. And 5 teams beat their line by 10+. Awesome start.

The consensus is in analytic/statistics/oddsmaker circles is that home field advantage in football had been diminishing over the past thirty years. In the NFL it has game from about 3 to about 1 while college has gone from about 3 to 3.5 to 2 to 2.5. College Basketball hasn't changed quite as much and can still be taken as somewhere around 3.

A lot of non-conference games are buy games. That means that the team with the higher budget and thus, more likely, the highest rated recruits is at home. So in most of the game one side has both the talent and home court advantage. Last night the result of this was pretty extreme.

D1 home teams were 100-17 against other D1 teams.
D1 teams were 58-0 against non-majors from other divisions. As far as I know these were all at home.
There were 2 neutral court, made for ESPN tipoff night, high profile D1 vs D1 games.

So in a game involving at least one D1 team that wasn't on a neutral court the home team won 158 of 175 games yesterday. So maybe I don't feel quite as bad about BG and Ball St. losing on the road end of a home and home.

We have to go to Belmont next year. I wonder the the athletic department is going to be able to justify as many buy games against low-majors as they have over the past several decades.

This one time at band camp....

Caught some of Ill St at EMU game, home opener in Stan Heath's return to the MAC with the Eagles winning in double OT. Noticed something I haven't seen in a long time - actual fans in the Convocation Center as EMU had a "Golden Ticket" promotion. Fans got Heath bars after the game with 10 containing a golden ticket. Hoping EMU had better results from their promotion than that of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin.

Watched most of the Kent Xavier game. KSU lead for the first 30ish minutes... then only scored 7 points in the last 10:30 to lose by 14.

EMU won an exciting game against Illinois St. in double OT.

The rest of the games were pretty much as expected... Michigan St. over WMU by 44, BG beat the Battling Bishops of Ohio Wesleyan 101-60 and the Hoosiers topped the Huskies 85-49.

Updated todays games with the spreads.

Also noticed that last night was one of the games from the Kentucky MTE as our next two opponents faced off. Kentucky squeaked by Bobby Mo 100-60.