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MAC basketball tournament schedule, bracket, TV, livestream info – Akron Beacon Journal
What should be an interesting 2023 Mid-American Conference men’s basketball tournament tipped off in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland on Thursday.
The Akron Zips are trying to become the first team to repeat as MAC champs since Buffalo went back-to-back in 2018 and 2019. The Zips face quite a challenge to earn the MAC’s automatic to the NCAA tournament again.
Toledo, Kent State and Ball State join Akron with more than 20 regular-season wins. Each team won double-digit conference games. Meanwhile Ohio, Buffalo and Northern Illinois are bunched together in the Nos. 5-7 seeds, but all of them have at least one regular-season win over one of the top four seeds.
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Final | Saturday, March 11
Semifinal | Friday, March 10
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Quarterfinals | Thursday, March 9
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Toledo enters the tournament as the No. 1 seed after going 16-2 in league play, a game better than KSU. The Golden Flashes won the only meeting between the two, 75-63 at Kent on Jan. 10. The Rockets have won 15 straight since that loss dropped them to 1-2 in league play (they’d also lost their MAC opener 90-83 at home vs. Ball State on Jan. 3). The Rockets have scored 84 or more points in their last six wins, with four of those coming by at least 21 points.
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The MAC tournament streams on any service that offers ESPN such as Hulu Live and YouTubeTV. The game broadcasts will also be available on the ESPN+ app.
First-round tournament games on Thursday will be streamed on ESPN+. The semifinals Friday are on CBS Sports Network. The championship game Saturday is on ESPN2.
Twelve of the MAC’s top 15 scorers from the regular season are in the tournament, including guards Xavier Castaneda of Akron and Sincere Carry of Kent State. Castaneda leads the MAC in scoring at 21.4 points per game (23.0 in league play). Carry is fifth in the MAC in scoring at 17.4.
Akron forward Enrique Freeman is the lone MAC player averaging a double-double, at 16.5 points and 11.1 rebounds per game.
Toledo is the lone team with three players ranked in the top 15 in scoring — RayJ Dennis Toledo (19.4, second), Walsh University-transfer JT Shumate (16.5, eighth) and Setric Millner Jr. (15.9, 10th). Dennis also leads the MAC in assists per game (5.9).
Other players ranked among the MAC’s top 15 scorers are:
No. 4 seed Akron knocked off top-seeded Toledo in the semifinals and No. 2 seed Kent State in the championship game on March 12.
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The winner of the MAC tournament finds out Sunday evening who and where it will play in the NCAA tournament. The NCAA tournament brackets are revealed on CBS, starting at 6 p.m.