ESPN, Gasaway - American still a power conference

[blackoutpony]

That's comforting to hear at least. Some good SMU love too.

http://insider.espn.go.com/mens-college ... api_public

The American Athletic Conference held its football Media Day last week in Newport, R.I., and league commissioner Mike Aresco marked the occasion by delivering an impassioned defense of his newly configured conference.

That is to be expected. After all, when you've just lost two of your programs to the likes of the ACC (Louisville) and the Big Ten (Rutgers) and you've had to import three new ones from Conference USA (East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa), your league is going to offer an impassioned defense.

On this front Aresco did not disappoint. In prepared remarks that quoted everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Saint Francis of Assisi, the commissioner stated plainly: "We consider ourselves a power conference."

Aresco was speaking of football, of course, but he raises a good question with regard to basketball. In the wake of Connecticut's national championship on the one hand but also the Cardinals' departure on the other, is "power conference" a fair characterization of the American in terms of hoops?


Yes, it is a fair statement, but it requires a qualifier. The American Athletic Conference is a power conference in terms of basketball, but the American and the Big East are the two weakest power conferences in the country.

To be sure, "weakest" hardly seems an apt description of a league that claims not only the reigning national champion in the form of the Huskies, but also three-fifths of last season's All-American team: UConn's Shabazz Napier, Louisville's Russ Smith and Cincinnati's Sean Kilpatrick.

Alas, those guys are all gone, and now the American faces the future with a group of 11 teams that collectively have won 69 NCAA tournament games over the past 15 seasons. There are two things to note about that number. First, it's smaller than what the current memberships of the Big East (77) or Pac-12 (96) can claim -- much less the other major conferences, all of which have posted well over 100 wins during that time period.

Second, as you'd expect, Connecticut alone accounts for the lion's share of those tournament wins. With 32 tournament victories in the last 15 seasons, the Huskies have earned fully 46 percent of the tourney wins claimed by the American's current members since 2000. This is the highest tournament win "share" carried by any power-conference program. (Kansas ranks No. 2 here, claiming 32 percent of the Big 12's tournament wins over the past 15 seasons.) Simply put, when it comes to prestige UConn dominates its league like no other major-conference team.

Then again, prestige may not be enough to win an American title in 2014-15. Larry Brown has performed something of a small miracle at Southern Methodist, and, as my colleague Seth Greenberg has noted correctly, the Mustangs still project to be very good even though top recruit Emmanuel Mudiay has opted to eschew collegiate ball and instead play professionally in China.

With or (as it happens) without Mudiay, the main task for SMU is exactly the same. If the Mustangs can simply hold on to the ball, everything else is in place to contend for an American title. Last season Brown's team scored 1.32 points per effective (or turnover-less) possession in conference play. That's very good, but it didn't matter because over the course of 18 conference games SMU gave the ball away on 21 percent of its possessions.

This is already a team that plays outstanding defense, and Markus Kennedy and Nic Moore give Brown an inside-outside duo that combines volume with high efficiency on offense. If Southern Methodist can just stay away from turnovers, you'll be hearing a lot about how this team has "matured" and "come together" after coming up just short in its pursuit of an NCAA tournament bid last season.

As for the defending national champions, Kevin Ollie will have to replace not only Napier but also DeAndre Daniels, Niels Giffey and Lasan Kromah. The good news for UConn fans is that Ryan Boatright, Amida Brimah, Phillip Nolan and Terrence Samuel return, and they'll be joined by North Carolina State transfer Rodney Purvis and highly touted freshman Daniel Hamilton. And did I mention Ollie is telling anyone who will listen what a great offseason Omar Calhoun is having? Even without Napier and Daniels, the Huskies should have plenty to say about who wins the American title.

Speaking of departures, everyone seems to be expecting Cincinnati to fall off appreciably in the wake of Kilpatrick completing his final season. There's no doubt that the senior was indeed a special player, but if Mick Cronin were losing just one starter the Bearcats would be an easy pick to exceed expectations. (Cincinnati's main strengths last season -- namely offensive rebounding and a tough defense that was strikingly foul-free -- wouldn't necessarily be negated entirely by losing a combo guard, even an outstanding one.)

No, if Cronin's team does indeed see a dip in performance in may be because he lost Kilpatrick and Justin Jackson and Titus Rubles. One might also wonder whether American opponents will shoot less than 29 percent from beyond the arc for a second consecutive season.

And at Memphis the rebuilding will truly start in earnest. Last season's rotation was built around no fewer than four seniors: Joe Jackson, Michael Dixon, Geron Johnson and Chris Crawford. True, Shaq Goodwin, Austin Nichols and Nick King all return for 2014-15, but this is still going to be a very young team, particularly in the backcourt.

Josh Pastner has reportedly been spending time in the offseason with Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan, in the apparent hope that the Badgers' low-turnover ways will rub off on Memphis. That's a worthy goal, but even Madison wasn't built in a day. Expect the young Tigers to finish one step off the pace set by SMU and Connecticut.

With a storied blue-chip program like Connecticut's, perennial contenders like Cincinnati and Memphis and a wondrous turnaround in progress at Southern Methodist, the American is indeed a power conference when it comes to basketball. In fact when the conference's basketball Media Day rolls around in October, commissioner Mike Aresco may want to quote Mark Twain. It turns out that rumors of the league's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

[Harry0569]

Promising article. 3 months 9 days until tip-off. Let's GOOOOO