CLEVELAND — Mid-American Conference Commissioner John A. Steinbrecher hopes Miami (Ohio)’s success this season will pay off on Sunday and in the future.
Steinbrecher is confident his conference will get two teams into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 27 years, even though the RedHawks lost to UMass 87-83 in the MAC Tournament quarterfinals on Thursday after going 31-0 in the regular season.
“I think Miami is in the tournament,” Steinbrecher said Friday before the conference semifinals began. “I reached out to the chairman and the committee representatives yesterday and provided them with some information. They won’t tell me for sure, but I feel like they’re there. They’ve done the things they need to do to get to the tournament. I think history has shown that until it shows us otherwise.”
The MAC has received multiple bids five times since the field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The last time was in 1999 when Kent State won the conference championship to earn its first NCAA trip while Miami earned an at-large berth after winning the regular season title.
Miami made the committee look good by reaching the Sweet 16.
The RedHawks were the fifth team this century to go through the regular season undefeated but were the second team to stumble in the conference tournament.
Miami’s critics have pointed to its poor schedule — 344th out of 365 teams in Division I, according to the NCAA’s evaluation tool — as a reason for not being in the 68-team field. However, Steinbrecher and many of his mid-major brothers point out that Tier 1 teams don’t want to schedule Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools.
The RedHawks have not faced any Tier 1 teams and are 2-0 against Tier 2 teams.
“We let metrics become the story instead of wins and losses. Well, metrics don’t work well when you have different schools doing their best to not schedule, and that’s what happens,” Steinbrecher said. “We have a number of schools that have difficulty getting quality games, so people don’t want to play them.
“For schools that are traditionally Tier 1, what the metrics push them to do is keep playing Tier 1 or Tier 4 and then beat the day out. That’s their secret sauce. And anywhere in that Tier 2 or Tier 3, they avoid that.”
The last team to go through the regular season undefeated and not make the NCAA Tournament was Alcorn State in 1978-79. This was because the Southwest Athletic Conference was in a transition period to Division I and did not have an automatic bid. The tournament field then had only 40 teams.
Second-seeded Akron (28-5) will face fourth-seeded Toledo (19-14) in the championship game on Saturday night. The Zips — which had one conference loss in the regular season — are trying to become the first school to win three straight MAC championships since their inception in 1980.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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