MAC Basketball Review: The East Completes Their Bullying (With An Exception)

Notes, recaps and video highlights from the final day of crossover games in MACsketball. Separate posts for WMU-Buffalo and Toledo-BGSU.

Not entirely sure what happened here. It took the Bobcats well into the first half (almost 11 minutes) to get their first points of the game, and that tried-and-true EMU defense just shut 'em down, I guess. And then they had a hot shooter: Derek Thompson finished with 23 points on nine shots and the entire team went 8-for-12 from three. for OHIO, Reggie Keely did have 14 points and 11 rebounds in a rare start.

And this will be the sixth and last MAC West win over the East. The final crossover scoreboard: East 30, West 6. But OHIO had two of the losses and EMU had two of the wins.

Nope, doesn't seem like Ball State's coming back from this spell. It's one thing to lose to Kent State — many do, but BSU, based on reports I've heard, didn't have much of a chance in this one and got beat on all fronts. Nice game for Justin Greene: 18 points, nine rebounds, and Jarrod Jones was frustrated all afternoon, finishing with seven points on 2-of-12 shooting. Aaron Adeoye gave BSU 14 points, leading the the team.

No highlights available.

NIU put up a decent fight for about 10 minutes, and then Akron put up a much much better fight for the final 30. Sums it up pretty nicely; UA swept through the West and keeps a one-game lead on everyone else. Alex Abreu led the offense again rather well, distributing for five assists, five steals and seven points. Nikola Cvetinovic scored a game-best 14 points. For NIU, Keith Gray and Abdel Nader both scored 13 points.

Just another team from the MAC West that looks completely lost. A fortunate Miami was in the right venue at the right time. CMU seems to be playing worse than Northern Illinois at this time and they had the top basketball recruit from a year ago. What in the world?

Of course it was Julian Mavunga with 14 points, six rebounds, four assists, two steals, two blocks, and possibly other statistics not yet invented. Jon Harris added more scoring with 17 points. And Trey Zeigler did have a decent game scoring 17 points and eight rebounds, but the rest of his team isn't picking him up very well. And this really poses a problem for Central: Ernie Zeigler's team isn't getting much better but if you fire him, you probably lose his son.

And I don't think Miami can parlay this win into any big momentum headed back into East play, but if they can scrap together a few more wins they might not have to go on the road in the first round.