MAC conference tournament preview

This is part 15 of a 32-part series.

Standings:
Buffalo 16-2
Toledo 13-5
Bowling Green 12-6
Kent St 11-7
Central Michigan 10-8
Eastern Michigan 9-9
Northern Illinois 8-10
Akron 8-10
Miami(OH) 7-11
Ohio 6-12
Ball St 6-12
Western Michigan 2-16

Format:
A first round for the bottom 8 teams is played at campus sites on March 11.  The remaining teams head to Cleveland March 14-16.

Matchups:
1) Buffalo vs. 8/9) Akron/Miami(OH)
4) Kent St vs. 5/12) Central Michigan/Western Michigan
3) Bowling Green vs. 6/11) Eastern Michigan/Ball St
2) Toledo vs. 7/10) Northern Illinois/Ohio

The stakes:
Buffalo is in the lockbox.  If they lose, we're getting the moment I've been waiting for, for two decades - the MAC at-large bid.  Longtime readers will know the tradition of always projecting an at-large bid for the MAC in preseason brackets.  Finally, after being down for so long, Buffalo has become a legit at-large team, and has even dragged the conference to 9th in CNET.  If they lose, we break through, folks.

Buffalo is 7-2 against Q1/2 schools.  That's shiny.  One bad one they took @NIU, but the Spiderman rule applies here.  Everyone gets one.  That won't hurt them.  If there is a criticism, only one of the 7 quality wins is over a tourney team (Syracuse), so that may hurt seeding.  They may only peak at a 7 or an 8 if the committee is onerous. 

Toledo has 4 Q2 wins and a NET of 60.  They're in range of the NIT bubble as an at-large, but they only have 1 Top 100 win.  So it's probably not going to happen.