Busting Brackets
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AAC Basketball: Analyzing the 6 new potential additions for league

By Joey Loose

Mar 19, 2021; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; The North Texas Mean Green celebrates beating the Purdue Boilermakers in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 19, 2021; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; The North Texas Mean Green celebrates beating the Purdue Boilermakers in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Nelles-USA TODAY Sports /
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AAC Basketball Wichita State Shockers guard Ricky Council IV Justin Ford-USA TODAY Sports
AAC Basketball Wichita State Shockers guard Ricky Council IV Justin Ford-USA TODAY Sports /

Final Thoughts

With the recent craziness of conference realignment, geography is sometimes deemed irrelevant, but the AAC has found a way to bolster their numbers without throwing geography to the wind. These moves give several current AAC teams a natural rival while also introducing the conference to a handful of untapped markets. From that perspective, these six additions make sense, but when you look at the basketball, things get a little more interesting.

These moves do not put the AAC on par with the power conferences of collegiate sports: the P5 of college football and the Big East. If these 14 teams were a basketball conference this season, this would be the preseason KenPom rankings for the programs: Memphis (16), SMU (60), Wichita State (62), UAB (71), Temple (106), Tulane (123), Tulsa (133), North Texas (135), Rice (144), East Carolina (160), South Florida (166), Florida Atlantic (194), Charlotte (201), and UTSA (237). Memphis is a program in great shape, and those next three schools are trending in the right direction, but that’s just four of fourteen schools in the preseason top 100.

If these moves are all about self-preservation, then the AAC has greatly succeeded. Building their numbers back up to 14 secures the future of the conference and likely leads to a TV deal and increased marketing. They snatch even more C-USA schools and turn the conference into a revamped version of the late 2000’s edition of the conference.

Preseason AAC power rankings for 2020-21. dark. Next

However, these moves do not make this a power conference and were certainly not the additions that could make this a stronger basketball conference. Anything can happen in the coming years, but to many this would look like a league that Memphis and Wichita State would control for years to come, with occasional resistance from schools like SMU and Tulsa. Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of these additions, and together they form a stronger AAC, but you’re kidding yourself if you think this makes the AAC a power conference.