March 11, 13-16. First round at higher seed. Remaining games at Cleveland, Ohio.

All-kenpom: D.J. Cooper, Ohio (kPOY); Chris Evans, Kent State; Zeke Marshall, Akron; Javon McCrea, Buffalo; Rian Pearson, Toledo.

Akron’s technically the log5 favorite, but last week their starting point guard was charged with trafficking marijuana and their backup point guard has a turnover rate near 50%, so this is a fairly significant development. Obviously, the odds below do not fully take this into account. Ohio’s lone two conference losses were to a fully-loaded Zips squad, most recently in overtime. This is a WCC-style bracket containing multiple byes for the top two seeds, but it makes more sense for the MAC to play this way. Since they’ll rarely have an at-large candidate, there’s more incentive for them to send their best team on to the NCAA tournament. Of special note here is the 1-in-300,000 chance for Northern Illinois, who posted an in-conference offensive efficiency a full 0.1 points-per-possession worse than any other MAC team.

Numbers listed are the probabilities of a team advancing to each round. Unfamiliar with log5? Here’s more than you want to know.

                  Rd1  Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 1 Akron          100   100   100  73.2  45.8
 2 Ohio           100   100   100  76.3  37.3
 4 Kent St.       100   100  74.2  23.0  10.1
 3 W. Michigan    100   100  64.5  17.3   4.7
 6 Bowling Green 78.0  50.8  21.3   4.5   0.9
 8 Buffalo       77.0  51.1  16.3   2.9   0.8
 7 E. Michigan   87.5  36.6  11.2   1.6   0.2
 5 Ball St.       100  37.2   7.2   0.7   0.1
 9 C. Michigan   23.0  11.7   2.3   0.2   0.04
11 Miami OH      22.0  10.7   2.8   0.3   0.04
10 N. Illinois   12.5   1.9   0.2   0.008 0.0003