MAC Power Rankings: Week Nine

The West is holding serve but the East continued its roller coaster ride of a season with another week of surprises as underdogs won both East clashes outright Saturday. Someone tells you before the season that by mid October Buffalo and Temple are alive for a division title but Kent State and Ohio aren’t, do you A. laugh, B. knee them below the waist, or C. ask them for the winning Powerball numbers? It’s all true, folks – the preseason picks for 1-2 in the East are out of the race, and the two schools that ESPN.com wrote had the two worst programs in D-I are right in the thick of the East chase.

How does the entire conference stack up? You know the drill – these rankings are for a game on a neutral field tomorrow. Let’s get to it:

1. Central Michigan – The Chips got positively rolled up by Clemson Saturday, 70-14, in a loss that has to at least pose the risk of being a mental setback. CMU can’t afford any let down, though, with dangerous road trips to Kent and Kalamazoo a-comin’. If CMU beats Western, they’ll win the West; only Eastern could stop the Chips, and the Eagles aren’t beating WMU, Toledo and CMU in a row. If the defense shores up the Chips should win the MAC title game going away.
2. Ball State – The Cardinals gutted out a win at Waldo Stadium Saturday behind a bunch of passing yards from Nate Davis and a little offensive trickeration. The Cardinals will probably be thinking about the 58-38 drubbing to Central for quite a while; BSU might be the MAC’s best team, but they didn’t bring their A-game on one night in Muncie and are still paying for it. Here’s a scenario to ponder: the Cards beat either Illinois or Indiana and sweep Toledo and Northern. If that happens, they’re out in the cold for the title game, but are sitting on 8-4 with wins over Navy, a Big Ten squad, and a near miss at Nebraska. How good can the bowl destination get?

3A. Buffalo – Your guess is truly as good as mine at who to put in this third slot. I don’t think the Syracuse loss was really that bad; the Orange needed the game a lot more than Buffalo after the season each team has had. Would the Bulls beat Western? I don’t know, but I saw WMU have a whale of a time stopping NIU’s Justin Anderson, so I might take Buffalo and James Starks against the Bronco D. On the other hand…

3B. Western Michigan - …I also saw what Nate Davis and the Ball State passing

attack did to the Buffalo D. Zip, zip, zip, all over the field. Tim Hiller looked more effective this week against Ball State than he did in the murk at Northern Illinois, and who’s to say the Bulls would have an answer for the Bronco offense, now third in the conference in passing, yards and scoring, and boasting a nice RB tandem of Brandon West and Mark Bonds? This is tough. But wait…

3C. Temple - …could the Owls really be the conference’s third best team right now?

It seems insane after the 0-5 start, but they’ve shown the ability to pass, play defense, and gut out close wins in the clutch. In a MAC campaign loaded with headline-earning QBs, Temple’s Adam DiMichele is 3^rd in the league in efficiency and has been clutch as clutch can the last few weeks when the Owls have needed him. Buffalo and Temple, the highest ranked MAC squads? Oh my. But who wants to play them? Between the two, they’ve knocked off Toledo, Ohio, Akron, Miami and Northern Illinois, some of the conference’s most storied programs. What kind of odds was Vegas laying on that six weeks ago?

6. Miami – The Redhawks had the East right where they wanted it, but came up lame against an inspired Temple squad Saturday, opening the door for half the country to stay in the division race. The Redhawks were awful on third down at Temple, converting just 3 of 19, and were almost that bad on the ground, with just 27 team carries for 70 yards. Is Dan Raudabaugh ready to lead this team to a MAC East title? If he ever has to throw 57 times a game again, as he did against the Owls, they won’t win the division.
7. Bowling Green – Something in my gut still tells me the Falcons are a better squad that Miami, but I have no earthly explanation for the 33 point beat down they suffered in Oxford. So 7^th they are, although there’s room to rise really far if Willie Geter has any more games like he did against Kent. Here’s how bad the BGSU running game has been: Geter, a freshman, had 16 carries in six games before Saturday. 22 carries and 209 yards later, he’s the team’s leading rusher by 15 yards a game. The Falcons might be the team most likely to win the East.
8. Akron – The Zips come off a week’s rest by traveling to Buffalo this weekend. Akron might be able to give Buffalo some trouble with their defensive balance; Akron isn’t great in any facet, but at 5^th in the MAC against the run and 3^rd against the pass, there are no glaring weaknesses like the Bulls found against Ohio and Toledo. The MAC seems extraordinarly dominated by QBs and RBs this year; Jabari Arthur is one of the league’s best pass catchers, and deserved more pub than he gets. The senior has 2208 career receiving yards and at least one TD in 6 of 7 games this year.
9. Kent State – This is where things get kind of interesting. The Golden Flashes’ season, for all intents and purposes, is over. With three East losses, they’re not winning the division, and only a flawless remainder of the season is going to give them any shot at the postseason. Now, I’m not saying the loss of Julian Edelman was a good thing by any means. But anyone who’s watched Edelman throw knows that he’s deathly inaccurate 15 yards or more down the field. But after Edelman broke his arm against BGSU, any chance freshman Giorgio Martin comes in and gives them a spark? It sounds like either Martin or Anthony Magazu the rest of the way.
10. Eastern Michigan – The Eagles played great between the twenties against Northwestern, but yakked in the red zone, turning the ball over to the Wildcats four times inside the 20 yard line and losing, 26-14. EMU is now just 1-6 against FBS teams this year, but for the second straight campaign, is better than their record indicates. For some reason they can’t finish the job or win close ones. Kyle McMahon looks promising at QB, but the three INT against the ‘Cats really, really, really (really) hurt. There’ll be better days for this EMU squad; Western Michigan had better be on upset alert this weekend.
11. Toledo – Good old Glass Bowl. The Rockets have had a winning home record for about a billion years in a row, and added another notch to the belt with a hard-fought win over the Bobcats Saturday. When I say hard-fought, maybe I should clarify. There were 8 turnovers in the game, 42 fourth quarter points, and both teams apparently were allergic to running backs, as Toledo’s Jalen Parmele and Ohio’s Kelvin McRae, two of the league’s best, combined for 431 yards and five scores. First-string QB Aaron Opelt returned to lead the Rockets to another exciting G-Bowl win, where the three W’s have come by a combined 5 points.
12. Ohio – Maybe Frank Solich is having sympathy pains for his old employer, Nebraska. Then again, maybe not. This Ohio squad found a creative way to lose for the second time in a month, dropping a game they really, totally, absolutely should have had at Toledo. Seven turnovers? Seven? Really? If the MAC were a more nationally recognized league, Ohio would be one of the nation’s biggest disappointments, picked by the media to win the East and now staring down the barrel of an 0-3 East record and no hope of the post season.
13. Northern Illinois – The Huskies made a nice sacrificial lamb for Wisconsin, which was needing a big-time win after getting dominated by Illinois and Penn State. I feel for Huskie coach Joe Novak; nothing’s going NIU’s way, with two heartbreak losses, key injuries at the quarterback position, and offense that, inexplicably, can’t convert to save its life in the red zone, not to mention sitting at just 114^th in the nation in scoring overall. There have been better times in DeKalb, and there will be again soon.