Conference prediction polls are nothing more than bulletin board fodder, I guess, but it seems like there would be much greater value in a preconference poll rather than a preseason poll for smaller conferences.

I'd be interested to see where OHIO would be selected by both sportswriters and other coaches after their surprising results from the early season games. How much change would there be? Where would OHIO be selected now? Still bottom of the East?

We got whipped pretty good in our three losses and while a MAC contender would not be expected to win all of those games we didn't put up much of a fight. Really, a MAC championship team should be pretty even with Utah.

I think what we have seen so far is very encouraging. I don't think that we would be last in a MAC poll right now. We would be ahead of WMU and, I'd say, Miami and Ball St. as well. But have we looked so much better than the other eight teams teams that we would have jumped over them. In some cases it is possible like with NIU and CMU but I don't know that OUr performance with respect to theirs in enough to change expectations. It is pretty similar overall. St. Bonaventure is the best team we have beaten and while winning on the road is great I doubt that they quite live up to their A10 #5 billing and I doubt that they would be a MAC contender. Iona may very well win the MAAC again but they would finish right near the bottom in the MAC. Maybe dead last.

If we CAN contend this year with a team this young and this many injuries right after a coaching change then the rest of the MAC should be scared about what is coming.

Bank on nine wins before January and the conference play begins. End up winning half or 10 games in MAC play and Ohio has 20 wins.

Sagarin has Ohio 6th in MAC right now and 140 overall. A little better than at start of the season. Looks a lot better now if injuries don’t completely derail us.

Ohio is eighth in the KenPom ratings. As noted, most rankings systems have almost all of the MAC from 80-180. The exceptions are Miami and Western Michigan at the bottom. So there's not much difference from one MAC team to another.

How does Hawkins keep his job at WMU all these years?

I could easily make a trophy if that somehow matters. But the point is we spend a lot of time arguing about where we stand and who is going to win and things like that. A computer system designed to pick future games is better at it than nearly every fan. Some other systems rank by strength of record or have some other objective. But the relevance is not in a trophy but in the track record of actual data.