The top two seeds of the tournament were given to division winners. Since Kent State had a better record than Northern Illinois, they were given the #1 seed, and the Huskies were given the #2 seed. The remainder of the bracket was determined by overall record. For the #3 seed, Akron and Miami were tied with a 14–4 conference record. They had also split their two regular season matches.[3][4] The next tiebreaker is to determine the teams performance against ranked teams in order. Akron was able to win one game against the Golden Flashes[5] while Miami was unable to win one, so Akron was given the fourth seed and Miami was given the final bye in the tournament. The #5 seed was determined through a three-way tie between Ohio, Toledo, and Western Michigan. Ohio had won its matches against Western Michigan[6] and Toledo[7] so they were given the #5 seed. Since Toledo was able to defeat Kent State in the regular season and Western Michigan was not, they were given the #6 seed.[8]Buffalo was seven games behind Kent State and had earned the eighth seed. Ball State was the #9 seed and the final East Division team, Bowling Green was the #10 seed. The final two teams, Eastern Michigan and Central Michigan were given the eleventh and twelfth seeds, respectively.