Bubble Babble for Feb. 7: USF & Charlotte May Not Win The American, But They're Making Noise

If you set an iCalendar reminder for Feb. 6 at the beginning of this college basketball season — hell, if you did so around Christmastime — please invest in lottery tickets.

I cannot imagine the foresight necessary to project that a Tuesday matchup between South Florida and Charlotte would be among the most exciting games in a week that included North Carolina-Duke, the customary K-State upset of Kansas with the Jayhawks coming off a dominant performance vs. Houston, and Gonzaga-Saint Mary’s ending with Bulldogs fans treating West Coast Conference referees like the NWO.

But the unofficial Lee Rose Invitational — consider that a teaser for the next installment of Final Four Fact February — delivered a thriller reflective of its high stakes.

USF and Charlotte came in tied atop the American Athletic Conference with nationally ranked 2023 Final Four participant FAU.

Now, one wouldn’t have gone out on a limb suggesting before the season that the almost entirely new-look American would be wild. The league lost one viable national championship contender in Houston but replaced it with another in FAU, retained a pair of talent-rich teams in SMU and Memphis, and welcomed North Texas and UAB programs that each enjoyed some noteworthy success in their final years of Conference USA membership.

A USF program that hasn’t qualified for the NCAA Tournament in 12 years and that has mostly languished in mediocrity since the formation of the American wasn’t an obvious choice to be some of the new blood that reinvigorated the league amid change.

The Bulls were picked ninth in the American’s preseason poll, just ahead of Tulsa and Rice and 28 points behind Wichita State.

Well, USF beat Wichita State on Jan. 21, part of an eight-game winning streak. The Bulls also topped Rice in the first meeting.

USF has had a flair for the dramatic, winning a variety of close games. Against Charlotte, the Bulls rallied from down 10 points at halftime and held the 49ers scoreless in the final two minutes to complete the comeback.

Shoutout to this intrepid USF fan who caught the final two minutes from his seat.

With its win on Tuesday, USF has beaten eight of the nine American opponents its seen, including knocking off a then-No. 10-ranked Memphis team on the road on Jan. 18.

Even with the Tigers’ recent skid, beating Memphis at FedEx Forum when the Tigers were on fire is the crown jewel of USF’s resume. The Bulls don’t see Memphis again, but have more opportunities to add some meaningful bullet points with FAU, SMU and Tulane all set to visit the Yuengling Center — it’s still the Sun Dome to me, dammit! — over the final month of the regular season.

USF also visits Charlotte in a return match of a classic first meeting. The 49ers were streaking heading into Tuesday’s showdown with wins that included FAU.

In fact, this edition of Bubble Babble was originally supposed to drop Monday with focus primarily on Charlotte. Despite falling from their place in the first-place pack of the American, the 49ers remain one of this season’s better stories.

On Saturday, Charlotte won its eighth straight with a 67-52 romp against East Carolina.

The Pirates came in firmly in the lower half of the league, and fell to 11-11 with the loss. That is to say Halton Arena wasn’t exactly hosting a matchup akin to that same day’s Duke-Carolina clash about two hours away in Chapel Hill.

And yet, Charlotte students camped outside of Halton on Friday night in anticipation of packing the arena.

Mission accomplished, as the 49ers played in front of a sold-out home audience for the first time in 11 years, and the energy they generated permeated through the screens of TV and social media.

CLT Gold Mine, the official Twitter account for the Charlotte student section, shared the below image of Friday’s campout. CLT Gold Mine referred to it as “Fearneville,” a nod to nearby basketball blue-blood Duke and its famed “Krzyzewskiville” and an homage to the 49ers first-year head coach, Aaron Fearne.

Fearne stepped into an unenviable position, as Charlotte basketball just eight months ago looked like an avatar for the problems college sports currently face.

A 49ers team that won the College Basketball Invitational — increasingly looking like the premier postseason option for quality mid-major teams left out of the NCAA Tournament — had its roster turned over pretty significantly.

Brice Williams transferred to Nebraska and the Big Ten. 2022 Conference USA Rookie of the Year Aly Khalifa landed at BYU in its first season of Big 12 membership. Head coach Ron Sanchez, who had done well in rebuilding a once-proud program that was near the nadir of the sport, left to take an assistant’s post at Virginia.

The defections understandably destined Charlotte to be picked second-to-last in the preseason American poll.

What was once a case study in the the hardships those programs left out of the football money arms race face has since becoming a sterling example of why college basketball is great.

Even in first-place, Charlotte wasn’t likely a team headed to the NCAA Tournament. The metrics aren’t kind to the 49ers, who sit at No. 102 in KenPom and No. 95 in NET. With or without a regular-season American championship, they’d almost assuredly need to win the automatic bid via the conference tournament.

Ditto USF, which the metrics actually like less than Charlotte. The Bulls are No. 105 in NET and No. 113 in KenPom.

And yet, there’s Charlotte playing in front of a packed arena on Saturday. Maybe some of that is a testament to how much the state of North Carolina loves basketball, but the Sun Dome rocked with its own energy evident on Tuesday in Tampa.

Surely both teams winning is central to attracting crowds, but college communities will rally around basketball even without the prospect of a Final Four appearance.