I’m using my ratings and Bill James’ log5 formula to estimate the chances of each participating team advancing to a particular round of its conference tournament.

Mid-American Conference
Location: First round at campus sites, remainder at Cleveland (Quicken Loans Arena)
Dates: March 10, 12-15
Chance of bid thief: zero
Current kPOY: Javon McCrea, Buffalo

Projections:

                  Rd1   Qtrs  Semis  Final  Champ
 2 Toledo         100    100   100    50.4   28.9
 1 W. Michigan    100    100   100    51.3   21.9
 3 Buffalo        100    100   63.8   34.2   20.9
 4 Akron          100    100   52.6   25.7   10.7
 5 Ohio          92.7   64.1   35.1   18.8    8.6
 6 E. Michigan   91.1   64.3   27.9   13.1    7.2
 9 Kent St.      40.3   15.0    5.8    2.1    0.7
 7 N. Illinois   68.0   22.9    5.7    1.6    0.5
 8 Miami OH      59.7   19.1    6.2    2.0    0.5
10 Bowling Green 32.0   10.1    2.3    0.6    0.2
11 C. Michigan    8.9    2.8    0.3    0.05   0.009
12 Ball St.       7.3    1.8    0.3    0.04   0.005

Toledo is the favorite here and also the league’s most interesting team. They were one of the country’s last remaining unbeatens and made it until February 15 before they scored less than a point per possession in a game.

The reason the Rockets are not the top seed here is that their defense ranked 10th in the MAC in conference play and 262nd nationally. They’ve held one D-I team below .9 PPP all season and that was Bowling Green, whose offense is rated 341st nationally due to repeated performances like that. 

The MAC’s super double-stepladder format harshly punishes those outside the top four. So Jim Christian’s Ohio club gets the screw job here. They aren’t substantially different in strength from the top four, but they are forced to play two more games than the four-seed and three more games than the two-seed.