UL perspective:

Quote:AAC basketball might not be ACC, but it's not AACK!
As Cards prepare to leave, new league coming into its own
Jan. 24, 2014 |
Written by Jeff Greer

Wednesday’s bad South Florida plays all run together, so forgive the fogginess of the story.

Sometime in the second half, USF stole the basketball from Louisville. The pass stealer became the ballhandler, and he threw the ball across the court, past two befuddled teammates and into the seats

The crowd groaned. The score read U of L a lot to USF a little. And it was increasingly evident that the inaugural American Athletic Conference season wasn’t shaping up entirely as expected.

Before the season, coaches and hoopheads alike knew the American had very good teams at the top and some rebuilding projects at the bottom. But through a month of league play, it’s clear the conference has five good teams, one mediocre team with no NCAA Tournament prospects and four simply bad teams.

The three league favorites have somewhat underachieved: U of L, Connecticut and Memphis all have chinks in their armor. Cincinnati and Southern Methodist have overachieved.

A conference that once was assumed to put three teams in the NCAA Tournament, with a fourth (Cincinnati) on the bubble, now looks like a potential five-bid league.

Aside from Houston and its plucky 3-3 conference record, the rest of the lot — Temple, USF, Central Florida and Rutgers — are on a different planet from the top half. There is no in-between.

Yet the American still ranks ahead of the Southeastern Conference in Ken Pomeroy’s power ratings and is behind the Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast, U of L’s future home.

“This league is a monster,” Memphis coach Josh Pastner said the day before his Tigers picked off Louisville 73-67 in the KFC Yum! Center.

SMU coach Larry Brown, who took Kansas to the 1988 national title, echoed Pastner two days before his Mustangs pushed the Cardinals but lost 71-63 in the same building.

“This conference is pretty darn good,” Brown said. “I respect every coach. You have a tremendous group of coaches. Some of them don’t get the attention they should.”

No one has done a better job this season than Mick Cronin, who has Cincinnati in first place through seven conference games. The Bearcats (18-2, 7-0) dropped SMU in the league opener and followed that with a victory at Memphis. They also beat nationally ranked Pittsburgh.

Cronin’s team is a consensus No. 5 seed in the Bracket Matrix, a site that collects NCAA Tournament projections and averages them. The Courier-Journal’s most recent bracket projection includes Cincinnati and U of L as 5 seeds, Memphis as a 6 and UConn as a 7. SMU is slated as an 11 seed with a play-in game.

Experts originally thought U of L, UConn and Memphis would be top-five seeds and Cincinnati might snatch a double-digit seed.

Cincinnati, U of L and SMU all have top-15 defensive efficiency rankings. Louisville, Memphis and UConn are top-50 offenses.

Temple, not SMU, was expected to be the AAC’s dark-horse tournament contender, though SMU’s young roster prompted plenty of “wait-and-see” season previews. Temple (5-12, 0-6) has the 239th-ranked defense in Division I.

The league’s coaches picked Rutgers to finish last and Houston to finish seventh. Rutgers is currently seventh, and Houston is tied for fifth with UConn.

U of L coach Rick Pitino was surprised by how poorly USF played Wednesday, citing the Bulls’ 61-54 loss to Cincinnati last weekend as proof of their toughness. They might have rolled over against the Cards — as Houston did on Jan. 16 — but no one thought the AAC would be where it is right now.

“This is a much tougher league than all of us anticipated,” Pitino said after his team’s loss to Memphis.

On Thursday the Cardinals will be playing for a tie atop the standings. No one thought the opponent would be Cincinnati.

That article said nothing. Basically flip Temple with SMU and you have what was thought about the conference going into the season. Has UC overachieved? Sure seems like it, but there is a lot of basketball to be played vs. UofL, Uconn, and Memphis before we see how it shakes out.

(01-25-2014 08:02 AM)Bearcatbdub Wrote:  That article said nothing. Basically flip Temple with SMU and you have what was thought about the conference going into the season. Has UC overachieved? Sure seems like it, but there is a lot of basketball to be played vs. UofL, Uconn, and Memphis before we see how it shakes out.

It was a poorly written article, no doubt.

Having said that, it referenced the idea that the AAC has been odd this year in that there are 5 very good teams (roughly top 35 in KenPom, clearly at large worthy) and then 5 bad teams. No in between.

It sucks the conference is going to lose Louisville. With Temple sure to bounce back and SMU clearly headed in the right direction though, basketball will be fine in this conference.

The bottom of the league has underachieved greatly in my view. I think most people that knew basketball had a feeling SMU was going to compete, heck they will be league favorite next season. Houston is about what I thought they would be, talented enough to pull an upset but not consistent enough to avoid bad losses. Temple is still dangerous even though this season is an injury disaster. USF has had injuries as well.

Louisville underachieved outside of the league, Memphis and UConn are who we thought they are.

What does AACK stand for? I've seen this elsewhere.

(01-25-2014 10:13 PM)payday Wrote:  What does AACK stand for? I've seen this elsewhere.

Term of endearment for the AAC

LOL at Pastner saying "this conference is a monster". I guess coming from CUSA, from his vantage point it is. Reality is, it's a solid to good basketball conference but it is no monster. The old big east was a monster conference. The AAC is not.

Isn't AACK the sound bill The Cat used to make?

(01-26-2014 12:07 AM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Isn't AACK the sound bill The Cat used to make?

The programs in this conference ought to be making whatever sound Schrodinger's cat makes.