2022-23 College Basketball Epilogue, Part 2: Conference USA Refuses to Die

Designation as “mid-major” in college basketball is more open to interpretation than the strict delineation of college football’s Power Five and Group of Five.

I spent much of Final Four week this year digesting what being a basketball mid-major constitutes, in light of FAU and San Diego State advancing to the national semifinals.

The Mountain West is and always has been a mid-major basketball league, even as it’s sent multiple teams to the NCAA Tournament for much of its existence. But why?

Perhaps it’s due to the Mountain West’s lack of March Madness success throughout its history. And while each of UNLV, BYU and Utah had some good teams in their time as MW members, the Jimmer Fredette-led BYU squad of 2011 and National Player of the Year Andrew Bogut’s 2005 Utah Utes were the only MW-era incarnations that came anywhere near approaching the peaks of each programs’ heights as the league’s historic standard-bearers.

And both those teams bowed out of the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16.

Conference USA’s mid-major status is much more cut-and-dry. It wasn’t always that way, though.

In providing some historical context to underscore the big-picture meaning of FAU and San Diego State advancing to the Final Four, I noted they were part of a growing trend in the last 17 years of teams from mid-majors conferences getting to title weekend: George Mason and VCU out of the Colonial; Butler for the Horizon League; Wichita State and Loyola representing the Missouri Valley; Gonzaga from the WCC¹; and now SDSU and FAU for the Mountain West and C-USA.

That’s noteworthy because, until George Mason’s Cinderella run in 2006, no team from outside the power conferences reached the Final Four since Utah when it was still a member of the Western Athletic Conference in 1998.

But wait! Conference USA sent teams to the Final Four in that eight-year stretch, and again after ‘06 but before FAU this past season.

Well, the short answer is that C-USA wasn’t a mid-major then, but it is now.

Criteria as to what constitutes a mid-major varies depending on who you ask: Some may contend any conference that competes in the football Group of Five or FCS is inherently mid-major by virtue of losing out on the TV revenue tied to Power Five football membership.

But then, there are too many exceptions that negate this application: Most of the Big East lacks football altogether, while Villanova and Butler are FCS programs and UConn is on the fringes of FBS, but no one contends the Big East is a mid-major conference.

Likewise, Gonzaga abandoned football during the Korean War; the Bulldogs also play in a decidedly mid-major conference. But it’s widely accepted Gonzaga is not a mid-major and hasn’t been for at least a decade.

The American Athletic Conference in its current, pre-realignment form might be the most peculiar example with Cincinnati, Houston and Memphis, none of which can be described as mid-majors. Each has too much historic success enduring through generations and constant changes to the landscape, and each has the capacity to be a national championship contender at any time without it being a surprise.

While the rest of the pre-realignment fits the bill of mid-major, the current edition with three programs the stature of Houston, Cincinnati and Memphis is enough to separate the league as high-major.

But while the AAC is ostensibly an off-shoot of the Big East, born from TV’s assassination of Big East football a decade ago, the American of today is Conference USA of yesterday.

Of its 11 members in 2022-23, nine teams in the American were members of C-USA — including the basketball power-program triumvirate of Cincinnati, Houston and Memphis.

And while the three provided the proverbial rising tide of present-day American basketball, there was more to C-USA in its heyday — a lot more.

Conference USA launched in 1995, merging the old Great Midwest Conference with the Metro. The result was the formation of a true powerhouse basketball league. Consider that ahead of the formation of C-USA, its charter membership featured:

• Cincinnati, a two-time national championship-winning program that reached the Final Four in 1992.

• DePaul, a history-rich program that showed true juggernaut potential not long before the formation of C-USA with 13 NCAA Tournament appearances from 1978 through 1992; seven top 10 AP Top 25 finishes, including twice going into March Madness ranked No. 1 overall; and a Final Four run in 1979.

• Louisville, winner of two national championships in the preceding decade.

• Marquette, 1977 national champion, 1974 national runner-up, and 16 Tournament appearances from ‘68 through ‘94.

• Memphis, 1973 national runner-up and 1985 Final Four participant.

And each of Louisville, Marquette and Memphis returned to the Final Four carrying the C-USA banner; Cincinnati was arguably the best team in the country in 2000 before Kenyon Martin suffered a broken leg ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

Of course, each left for different destinations with different motivations: For Cincinnati, Louisville and Memphis, it was the pursuit of football prominence as members of a Big East Conference that, at the time of each member’s departure, was still designated as a gridiron power conference by virtue of receiving an automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series.

The BCS is a noteworthy player in the tumultuous history of C-USA basketball. Note that the formation of the league predates the inaugural BCS season by three years; by the 21st Century, the idea of forming a power basketball conference would have seemed outlandish and thus I personally don’t believe Conference USA could have happened — at least not as it originally came together — even a half-decade later.

Football-motivated conference affiliation has only gotten more prevalent as the BCS gave way to the College Football Playoff. It has, at the same time, become more nonsensical, desperate, and frankly detrimental to other sports including basketball.

And yet, somehow, Conference USA has managed not only to survive as a basketball league, but thrive, even after losing power-conference distinction.

Since football forced the splintering of the Big East and formation of the American 10 years ago, teams under the C-USA banner have won NCAA Tournament games in six postseasons:

• UAB (beat Iowa State in 2015)

• MTSU (beat Michigan State in 2016 and Minnesota in 2017)

• Marshall (beat Wichita State in 2018)

• North Texas (beat Purdue in 2021)

• FAU (became the first C-USA Final Four team since Memphis in 2008)

The 2022-23 season in particular was a special one for Conference USA: Along with FAU’s journey to Houston, Charlotte won the College Basketball Invitational and North Texas bested UAB in an all-C-USA NIT finale.

Conference USA proved its value, and has repeatedly proven its value, as a basketball league. While the conference has added members for the last two decades with an eye toward football potential (and another eye on survival), it’s maintained a quality basketball product almost entirely through good fortune.

It’s unfortunate, though, because this is where the mid-major label matters: C-USA received just one bid in each of the six post-American NCAA Tournaments.

It absolutely could have been a multiple-bid league this year, with North Texas finishing No. 31 in KenPom.com overall rankings. Marshall’s surprise run to the automatic bid in 2018 came at the expense of an MTSU team that was ranked in the KenPom top 40 during Selection Sunday.

So while the definition of mid-major may be vague, its impact is clear: Mid-major is viewed as less-than.

“All the outside noise and people calling us this and that…After this year, I feel like people will have a lot more respect for Conference USA,” FAU guard Bryan Greenlee said at the Final Four.

Greenlee’s point is correct — or at least, it would be, if football movement wasn’t again coming at the expense of basketball success.

When Cincinnati, Houston and UCF exit for the Big 12² this summer, the six newcomers replenishing the American’s ranks all come from C-USA and include the four postseason success stories: Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA.

For the six, it’s likely a lateral move as basketball is concerned. Only Memphis remains among the American’s power players and the conference name doesn’t carry cachet that will translate into power-conference treatment.

As for C-USA, it again shakes up its membership with focus on football (and survival), but adds:

• New Mexico State, a program with decades of historic basketball success including a 2022 NCAA Tournament win over UConn;

• Liberty, which has — for better or worse — invested heavily in successful football and men’s basketball teams, the latter of which scored a March Madness win over Mississippi State in 2019;

• in 2024, Kennesaw State, a 2022-23 breakthrough program that came minutes away from beating Xavier.

It may not be intentional, but regardless the labels applied to it, Conference USA basketball simply will not die.

1. Bearing in mind Gonzaga itself isn’t a mid-major program, but it represents a mid-major conference.

2. Of no coincidence, all three reached New Year’s Six bowls (and, in Cincinnati’s case, an improbable College Football Playoff).