AAC Basketball’s flagship program, Houston, has built a national brand over the last half of a decade or so. Kelvin Sampson’s team has amassed multiple 30-win seasons, and NCAA Tournament appearances, and this past season earned a No. 1 seed. With few exceptions, it has been the Memphis Tigers that have been trying to chase down the Cougars, but Houston now leaves the American for the Big 12 along with league brethren Cincinnati and Central Florida.
The league will have a whole new look in 2023-24 as it welcomes six new members to replace the departed and expands to 14 teams for the coming year. A whole lot of questions about the league and what it is going to look like moving forward abound as we head into the summer. With Houston gone, the league certainly becomes more wide open, with any number of teams able to make a case for being the top team in the conference.
Despite Houston’s strength, the conference hasn’t had much March success outside of the Cougars. Memphis was the only other team from the league to make the tournament this past season, and they were only a No. 8 seed who lost to Florida Atlantic in the first round. In fact, no member of the conference besides Houston has made the Sweet Sixteen since the UConn Huskies took home the title in 2014.
With so many changes to the league this coming year, there are plenty of things to consider when examining the new-look AAC. Here are five key offseason storylines for the American.
With Houston gone, is the AAC now Memphis’ conference?
Ever since Penny Hardaway arrived at Memphis five years ago, the Tigers have been the most consistent challengers to Houston in the AAC. With the Cougars off to the Big 12 Memphis has a chance to anoint itself as the top cats in the conference. The Tigers have made back-to-back NCAA tournaments under Hardaway, and previous to that win an NIT title, but success in March has been fleeting for the Tigers.
They won their opening round game in 2022 but besides that, the Memphis program hasn’t reached the Sweet 16 since 2009 and hasn’t won a regular season conference title since 2013. With Houston gone the door is open for them to ascend to the top. The Tigers will have plenty of competition for that top spot, especially given the new arrivals to the conference, but Memphis should be one of, if not the best teams in the conference (on paper) in 2023-24.
Hardaway was brought back to his alma mater to not just make NCAA tournaments but to win games in the tournament as well as compete for and win league championships. With a new era for the conference beginning, that pressure to show more fruitful results going forward.
The AAC welcomes six new schools from Conference USA
The league loses three teams with Houston, Cincinnati, and Central Florida all headed for the new-look Big 12. When the departures were announced, from a basketball sense it seemed as thin the league may take a step back. In order to reload the conference they raided Conference USA to bring in six new schools, all of which used to call Conference USA home.
They may not have known it at the time but now it looks like the American has struck hoops gold with the additions of Texas- San Antonio, Rice, Charlotte, UAB, North Texas, and Florida Atlantic. The FAU Owls were seconds away from playing for the national championship and UAB battled fellow conference foe North Texas for the NIT title with the Mean Green taking home the hardware. The Charlotte 49ers came away with a title of their own, winning the CIT, and the other Owls joining the conference, the ones from Rice are coming off their winningest season since 2016-17 when Mike Rhoades won 23 games.
The postseason success had by Conference USA has the AAC looking pretty despite losing the program that became the measuring stick in the league. Adding these six schools also makes the conference potentially deeper than it has ever been.
Ross Hodge takes over for Grant McCasland in Denton
After conquering the big apple and taking home the NIT title Grant McCasland decided to leave North Texas where he had been since 2017 to take over at Texas Tech. In those six years, McCasland built the Mean Green into a perennial contender in Conference USA, making the postseason in all but one non-covid year with championships in the NIT and CBI and a win over Purdue two years ago in the NCAA tournament as a No. 13 seed.
Replacing McCasland without disrupting what he built might have proved difficult but they wasted little time in naming longtime assistant Ross Hodge as the new head man. If anyone knows McCasland’s philosophies and can build upon them, it would be Hodge who has been a part of the departed coach’s staff since 2016-17 at Arkansas State before following him to Denton.
The roster that Hodge inherits will look quite a bit different from last year’s squad (such is the case in college basketball nowadays). Tylor Perry is in the portal, the same goes for Abou Ousmane and Kai Huntsberry made the most of his one year in Denton. One thing that will likely stay the same is the defensive effort. Over the past three seasons, the Mean Green have had a top-50 defensive efficiency team and a top-30 team in effective field goal percentage defense and that is not likely to change under Hodge as they head to the AAC.
Is Charlotte a hidden gem among the new additions?
The top three finishers in Conference USA, Florida Atlantic, UAB, and North Texas are the most recognizable ones but there is another team that had success in March and will be joining the AAC this season, the Charlotte 49ers. Not much is known of the reigning CIT champs compared to the other three March darlings.
Head coach Ron Sanchez went 22-14 on his fifth season with the team leading them to their first postseason berth since 2012-13 and their highest win total since Bobby Lutz won 23 all the way back in 1998-99. You could see things building for the 49ers when they won 17 in 2022 and bumped that number up to 22 and the best season in decades for the program.
So, what does the AAC have with the addition of Charlotte? Sanchez will have some work to do this summer because his two leading scorers from this past season, Brice Williams and Aly Khalifa are currently in the transfer portal. If the duo does leave that would leave junior forward Igor Milicic, Jr as the team’s top returning scorer. Charlotte is a team that likes to play slow, with only North Texas playing slower last season.
Offensively they’re a team that doesn’t turn the ball over, just under 11 per game last season, and have been very effective shooting the ball over the last two years. Over that time, they are 35th in effective field goal percentage, 38th in two-point percentage, 66th in from deep, and 32nd in free throw percentage. If they can build upon the past two seasons, the American might have a hidden gem in a Charlotte program heading into unchartered territory.
The additions could mean better tournament resumes
If you start with 11, subtract three and then add six, my abacus tells me the American will grow to 14 teams next season. Yes, losing Houston, Cincinnati, and Central Florida to the Big 12 was a blow to the basketball acumen of the league, adding over half of Conference USA could make the league better off in the long run.
Not only will the new-look league now have an even number, but the additions of Florida Atlantic, UAB, North Texas, Rice, Charlotte, and Texas-San Antonio also give it a deeper look from top to bottom, especially if some of the remaining members return to form. The depth is important because it should do a few things for the AAC. First, it should be able to help the out-of-conference strength of schedule for the league. Last season the American had just four teams with a top 100 NCSOS.
Adding three more teams that had the same will certainly help, as will adding the quality of these teams when it comes to building the resumes of teams within conference play. Last year if you were in the AAC and wanted an NCAA tournament quality win, you had just two chances, Houston and Memphis. This season that number will double, if not triple.
The last and most important impact adding these teams should have on the conference is its ability to earn multiple tournament berths on a more consistent basis, and not just bids, but bids with higher seeds. Besides Houston, no team from the American has earned a top-six seed since Cincinnati in 2018 as a No. 2, and that’s not good enough if you want to be considered to be in the upper echelon of college basketball conferences. The additions the American has made have the potential to put them there.