MACtion is just as entertaining in basketball as football.
Sure, there's a lot of roster changes this season — as the league's top three guards and best defenders depart for various reasons — but very few conferences consistently develop talent better than the MAC.
The league's top half is always solid, but the bottom half? Mediocrity has marred it for the better part of a decade.
Will those fortunes change in 2023-24, or will it remain the same?
MAC Regular Season NCAAB Conference Title Odds
| Team Name | Odds (Via Caesars) |
| Kent State | +260 |
| Akron | +350 |
| Toledo | +350 |
| Ohio | +700 |
| Miami (OH) | +800 |
| Bowling Green | +1200 |
| Buffalo | +1200 |
| Ball State | +1500 |
| Northern Illinois | +2000 |
| Eastern Michigan | +2000 |
| Central Michigan | +5000 |
| Western Michigan | +6000 |
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The Contenders With Betting Value
The Golden Flashes won the MAC tournament last season but lost their two most important players, Sincere Carry and Malique Jacobs.
Seeing those two program mainstays finally appear in the Big Dance was great. That said, which players can get the Flashes back to college basketball's premier event?
Enter significant breakout candidates like athletic forward Chris Payton Jr. and dazzling scorer Jalen Sullinger. The latter contains serious All-Conference potential after he won the MAC Sixth Man of the Year award last season.
Sullinger is entertaining to navigate on offense. He's always willing to get shots up, which is respectable.
Plenty of star power remains at Kent State, so don't expect a major fall-off from the Flashes. They'll stay right in the contender tier.
Winning is becoming consistent at Akron, as the Zips have secured 20+ wins in three of their past four seasons.
This year should remain the same.
Akron returns one of the nation's best bigs, Enrique Freeman. The 6-foot-7 senior should be an absolute menace on the glass after averaging 16.8 points and 11.2 rebounds per game a season ago.
The departure of Xavier Castaneda should open up more offensive sets for Freeman.
Freeman and Ali Ali should be one of the more potent duos in the MAC. Ali, whose back at Akron after one season in the Big East at Butler, offers some shooting and floor-spacing on the wing, helping Sammy Hunter and Freeman occupy the frontcourt.
As one of the league favorites, bettors expect Akron to be in the mix with Kent State for the MAC crown.
Here's what it comes down to, though: Guard play.
It's everything in the wonderful world of college hoops, and the Zips hope Kaleb Thornton (Northern Illinois), Shammah Scott (Wichita State) and returning sophomore Tavari Johnson will provide backcourt stability.
Thornton is Akron's best bet for a reliable point guard option. He's familiar with the conference — from his time at Northern Illinois — and he has significantly more talent around him than he did in DeKalb.
Akron regularly ranks near the top of the MAC in percentage of 3-point field goal attempts — with over 40% of its shots coming from deep. That makes a consistent perimeter attack even more important.
Akron's talent and experience makes it a safe bet to win the league this season.
Toledo won the conference regular season title in two consecutive seasons, but it couldn’t seal the deal during the league tournament.
A lack of defense and the offense playing a disappearing act sent the Rockets to the NIT instead of the Big Dance in 2021-22.
With a new-look roster, will their fortune change?
The Rockets will once again rely on guards to carry the offense. They return three important cogs in Tyler Cochran, Ra'heim Moss and Dante Maddox Jr., all of whom made significant contributions last season.
Maddox has the biggest breakout potential of the bunch. He averaged 11.3 points per game while shooting a blistering 45% from deep on over 100 attempts last season.
Perhaps the most interesting guard, though, is freshman Sonny Wilson, a top-165 recruit from Detroit. Wilson has the scoring pop to put Toledo back on the conference-contending track. And plus, when Toledo finds high school guards, you pay attention. I mean just look at Ryan Rollins and Marreon Jackson.
Toledo’s defense is still a cause for concern — as expected, since that’s how the program has operated. The Rockets will play small, but they lack adequate rim protection to halt quick guards from scoring inside.
Opponents scored on Toledo with relative ease last season, as the Rockets finished 295th in KenPom's defensive efficiency metric. That was over 130 spots lower than the previous season.
Optional defense and elite offense has stung them in the conference tournament, but for betting futures purposes, Toledo is worth a whirl.
The Best Values
Northern Illinois Huskies
The Huskies have a real fire-and-lightning duo.
The fire is David Coit, a smaller guard who averaged 15.5 points while earning third-team All-MAC honors last season.
The lighting is Keshawn Williams, who flashes freakish athleticism and dazzling scoring prowess. Williams was poised for an All-MAC season in 2022-23 — averaging 17.9 points in 15 games — until an injury on January 7 kept him out for the remainder of the season.
The Huskies also return double-digit scorer Zarique Nutter and add DePaul transfer Philmon Gebrewhit. Both will likely start together at the three and four, respectively.
That creates other issues, though. Northern Illinois finished 334th in defensive rebounding rate, per KenPom, and did nothing in the portal to fix those noticeable issues. That means there won’t be many second-shot opportunities for the Huskies.
Another issue Northern Illinois must address is its brutal free-throw shooting. It shot only 64% from the line — good for 345th nationally — and turned it over on 20.3% of possessions — good for 314th nationally.
Those three issues must improve — to some degree — if the Huskies are to have any real shot of capturing the conference crown.
But it would be silly to ignore this level of talent.
Ohio Bobcats
Jeff Boals consistently churns out high-level guards like it’s nothing.
This time around, it’s floor general guard Jaylin Hunter and rising star AJ Brown, who's a dynamite scoring threat.
Hunter had the unenviable task of following up Mark Sears, who transferred to Alabama and started for the top-seeded Tide in the NCAA tournament.
While Hunter isn't Sears, he made a name for himself as one of the best floor generals in the MAC last season, averaging 13.2 points and 4.2 assists per game.
The other big name — Brown — averaged 10.2 points while shooting 37.6% from deep, despite starting only eight of 26 games played. It feels like Brown is knocking on the door of stardom due to his impressive three-level scoring skill-set.
You also can’t forget about Shereef Mitchell (Creighton) and Maryland wing transfer Ike Cornish (Maryland). Neither played huge roles at their previous programs, but dropping down a competition level won't hurt.
Mitchell's experience and terrific passing ability makes him an ideal backup to Hunter.
Additionally, Cornish is the perfect down-transfer, who could benefit greatly from a change of scenery. A former top-100 recruit, Cornish sat behind an experienced Maryland core under a new head coach. He just never did enough to crack the rotation, but his size and shooting on the wing could help him play a big role in the MAC.
What's Ohio's biggest issue? A lack of replacements for Dwight Wilson III. Wilson was nothing short of terrific, averaging 15.4 points on 61% shooting last season.
He was the option to bail out the offense in late-clock situations, and coaches always paid extra attention to Wilson's whereabouts, which opened up scoring lanes for his fellow Bobcats.
Thankfully, most MAC teams deploy smaller lineups — if you couldn't tell.
Forward AJ Clayton offers solid stretch-four ability following an improved 7.8-point, 4.7-rebound season as a sophomore.
But the biggest key is Gabe Wiznitzer. If the 6-foot-11 center can provide enough stability defensively, he's a reliable option for Boals to rely on.
Boals has won 18+ games in each of his four seasons at the helm of his alma mater, which speaks to his ability to build a winning culture.
Miami (OH) RedHawks
Travis Steele showed promise in his first season at Miami (OH). The RedHawks won four of their final six games, which is the polar opposite trend of Steele-coached teams at Xavier.
Everything runs through the thickly-built Anderson Mirambeaux, who stands 6-foot-8, 305 pounds. The Cleveland State transfer found ways to make the RedHawks better, using his size to dominate in the post and his high-level passing ability for his size.
Who else can help Mirambeaux out, though? A trio of guards could be the answer, including Bradley Dean — a highly-skilled transfer from the D-II level — intra-conference transfer Darweshi Hunter (Northern Illinois) and second-leading scorer Morgan Safford.
Miami (OH) couldn't stop anybody last season, though. If you're the 315th-ranked defense in the country, it's not translating to wins — except if you're Toledo.
Miami's offense isn't good enough to make up that ineffectiveness on the other end, especially in this high-powered offensive conference.
That will have to change if it's able to actually make a move in the MAC. But there's enough talent to buy into the possibility.
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The New Coaches
Buffalo had to make a move after multiple underwhelming seasons under Jim Whitesell.
Enter George Halcovage, a youngster at only 37 years old who spent the past six seasons at Villanova. His first roster — which includes seven new players — will take some time to mesh correctly.
Jay Wright's coaching tree is unimpressive, with many former Wright assistants losing their jobs before reverting to assistant roles or lesser head coaching gigs — besides Joe Jones, who found consistency at Boston University. Can Halcovage be the exception to the rule?
The best returning piece for the Bulls is Isaiah Adams. The senior averaged 11.4 points and 5.0 rebounds per game in a small-ball four role last season, so expect the newly-minted Halvocage to incorporate ways to get Adams the ball.
Despite having name cache, Buffalo isn't worth betting on in MAC futures and is worth fading until the newcomers find their footing in a new system.
Bowling Green Falcons
Bowling Green made a terrific hire in Todd Simon from Southern Utah. He won 20+ games in three consecutive seasons at Southern Utah and looks to bring a similar winning culture to Ohio.
Simon brought 6-foot-11 center Jason Spurgin with him from Southern Utah and added a pair of guards, DaJion Humphrey (Garden City CC) and DJ Smith (Little Rock).
Humphrey is the biggest backcourt name to watch. At 6-foot-4, Humphrey offers ideal size paired with athleticism and shot-creation ability from the lead guard spot.
That's good, especially for a rebuilding program in the first year of a new head coach's tenure.
Simon's coaching philosophy is to play with tempo — and take threes when his personnel allows it. His two guards love to shoot it from deep, so expect a barrage of perimeter jumpers from the new-look Falcons.
But this area of play must be better to warrant betting on the Falcons' long odds to win the MAC.
Unlike Buffalo, Bowling Green can make for an appealing team to back depending on the game. Also, the Falcons' pace could put overs in play early in the season, at least until the books gauge BGSU's scoring output.
Longshots to Ignore
Eastern Michigan Eagles
The Eagles were a long shot worth taking a chance on last season, as Emoni Bates and Noah Farrakhan's scoring prowess led to optimism for the program.
That said, it didn't translate to wins, as EMU finished 8-23 overall and 5-13 in league play.
The objective for the Eagles this season: Find an identity. Whatever it is — whether's it's on offense or defense — just find a way to win team basketball games, especially after Bates and Farrakhan focused on scoring in isolation spots instead of scoring through the flow of the offense.
Just finding that thing to make yourself unique is all it takes to get a program back on the tracks.
Returning guards Tyson Acuff and Orlando Lovejoy will have a myriad of opportunities to contribute to the scoring, but I can't picture it leading to double-digit wins.
Maybe not having two-ball stoppers can help the offense develop more cohesion. However, the talent is completely diluted. Long days ahead for Stan Heath in Ypsilanti.
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Ball State Cardinals
The portal giveth and the portal taketh away. For Ball State, it took significantly more than it gave this time around.
Things looked to be on an upswing in Muncie, with an impressive 20 wins in Michael Lewis' first season at the helm. That was until Payton Sparks and Boogie Coleman entered the portal, though.
In all, Ball State lost about 60 of its 76 points per game from last season. That's almost impossible to flip around in one go in the portal.
The Cardinals did next-to-nothing to replace their departed stars and only return a few players of relevance. Loyola Marymount transfer Jalin Anderson is a possible option to lead the MAC in scoring — just due to the sheer amount of shot attempts he'll have to take.
There isn't many other scoring options down in Muncie to compliment Anderson, though.
Western Michigan Broncos
Western Michigan is positioned similarly to its in-state counterparts mentioned above. The Broncos were bottom-10 in defense nationally last season, per KenPom, and only won eight games.
So, how do the Broncos figure out a winning formula? They too need to find an identity.
The Broncos are a rare MAC team to deploy a 7-footer in Javonte Brown, who comes from Texas A&M and could carve out an important role from the jump.
Two other names to watch? The backcourt tandem of Seth Hubbard and B. Artis White. It must be cool for B. Artis to be your first name. Additionally, White is looking to rediscover his 14.4-point average from two seasons ago following two injury-marred campaigns halted his development.
The former, Hubbard, is a stone-cold sniper from distance, hitting over 42% of his 103 3-point attempts as a freshman. If Hubbard figures out a way to diversify his scoring skillset, watch out.
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