MAC Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2023-24 season

2. Kent State Golden Flashes

Last Season: 28-7 (15-3 in MAC play)

Kent State was one of the more stout teams defensively in all of college hoops in their 2022-2023 campaign. To many, the previous clear and away MAC favorites proved to be supreme in their victory over Toledo in the MAC conference championship. As noted earlier, Kent State held Indiana to a mostly competitive game in the first round of the NCAA tournament. This is the team that also took Charleston, Gonzaga, and Houston down to the wire earlier in the season.

Their performance against Houston was one of the toughest matchups in college hoops in recent years especially. Defensively, they held up against some of the best teams in all of college basketball. The main reason they did not see more success was their struggles to score at times having difficulty from beyond the arc especially.

Losing only 7 games last year, the Golden Flashes look for a repeat again. Early on, they play Charleston again as well as some other big tests in Oregon and St Mary’s among others. The big question for them is if this new team can pick up where last year’s left off. Giovanni Santiago is one of their more important returners with the ability to create offense off the dribble for himself. They also return some experience in Chris Payton Jr., VonCameron Davis, and others. One of the more intriguing transfers was former Central Michigan guard Reggie Bass who was instrumental in CMU’s victory over Michigan just a season ago.

Needless to say, head coach Ron Senderoff has his program in a good position to compete at the top of the conference and potentially come away with some great wins for the program. In a successful world for the MAC, you could almost paint a picture of the conference getting two bids this year with Akron and Kent State both if their seasons go as planned. More likely than not, we will see only the conference tournament winner, but it goes to show the potential this team here has.