bill dazzle
Craft beer and urban living enthusiast
Posts: 10,691
Joined: Aug 2016
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I Root For: Vandy/Memphis/DePaul/UNC
Location: Nashville
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RE: Big East basketball a proven step up from AAC
(07-22-2019 09:19 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote: (07-22-2019 12:27 AM)scoscox Wrote: (07-21-2019 08:57 PM)breinin2 Wrote: You, uh, trying to use Marquette and Louisville's final fours, and Memphis' vacated appearance, to prove the AAC's bonafides?
Good catch
C-USA 1.0 (1995-2005) was a very strong and competitive basketball conference. While Cincinnati, Louisville and Marquette anchored the league between seeds, tournament bids and deep tournament runs at the top, the league was also solidified in the middle, with programs like Charlotte, Memphis, DePaul, UAB and SLU collectively earning multiple bids annually as well.
Cincinnati reached national heights under Huggins, routinely being in the top-10 nationally and earning an Elite Eight in '95 and Sweet 16s in '95 and '01. Louisville reached an Elite Eight in '97 and a Sweet 16 in '96 under Crum, and a Final Four under Pitino in '05. Marquette went to the Final Four in '03. Charlotte was an immensely underrated backbone of C-USA, as they made the tournament EIGHT times between 1995-2005. Memphis, while not reaching the same tournament success as those programs, had gone to a Sweet 16 in '95 and made the tournament four times. UAB and SLU made it to the tournament three times; DePaul made it twice. The bottom of the league was very, very, very poor - USF, Houston, Tulane, Southern Mississippi, ECU and TCU (they had a combined ONE bid as members of C-USA).
C-USA, when it was formed, had multiple teams that had competed-for and/or won national championships in basketball in the previous twenty years: Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, Memphis (even removing the vacated seasons). The league was had perceived strength not only because of the top, but because of the constant support from the middle (Charlotte, UAB and SLU). Unfortunately, for the AAC, they will have not had a program that has appeared in a national championship in over forty seasons (Memphis was last in 1973), and they will not have had a program win a national championship in over fifty seasons (Cincinnati in 1962). Wichita State is the only program to have a recognized Final Four appearance in the past 25 years. Couple that with the continued and ever-constant non-competitive bottom (regularly includes ECU/Tulane, and at least one other program), and I think it will be incredibly hard for the AAC to reach the same level of success as C-USA 1.0 did. I just don't see multiple different programs getting to the Final Four/Elite Eight as C-USA 1.0 did in their window. Heck, six seasons into the AAC, only one program has advanced to the Sweet 16 (Houston).
This is a very fair and accurate assessment of comparing C-USA at its strongest to the AAC currently. The three hoops programs of note remaining in the AAC are Cincy, Houston and Memphis (a quality trio, no doubt). They have since been joined post-C-USA by SMU, Temple, Tulsa and Wichita State. That is a very respectable quartet but it does not compare well (and some could reasonably argue it compares poorly) to the six-team C-USA grouping (now gone) of Charlotte, DePaul, Louisville, Marquette, Saint Louis and UAB.
I covered (admittedly, very modestly) The Great Midwest and C-USA for Athlon Sports during the 1990s. C-USA at its peak was a very strong conference and I would always note that to doubters back in the day (true, I was biased as I had some teams in the league I supported for various reasons).
The current AAC does not have that level of depth. It would need its "Big Seven" (would have been eight had UConn stayed) to be joined by at least one of ECU, UCF, USF and Tulane and (ideally) the addition of VCU to mildly flirt with the level of strength of the old C-USA. It's doable — but very unlikely.
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