One last trip around 'old' C-USA
By Pat FordeBy Tuesday afternoon, the dismantling of Conference USA will become official. The worst-kept secret in college athletics will finally go public, as Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, DePaul and South Florida skedaddle for the Big East.
And a league built on dreams of becoming a basketball super power will finally succumb to an eight-year run of bad timing, bad decisions and bad luck.
It figures that C-USA would be robbed of its best basketball schools seven months after Marquette finally became the league's first-ever Final Four team. There's always been something out there to serve as a star-spangled momentum killer for C-USA.
This is the conference that came together just in time to see hoops powerhouses Louisville and Memphis fall apart. Now that those two have it back together and have reignited one of the nation's best rivalries, the league is falling apart.
| ESPN.com All-Conference USA Team | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pos. | Player | School | Yr. |
| G | Travis Diener | Marquette | Jr. |
| G | Morris Finley | UAB | Sr. |
| F | Francisco Garcia | Louisville | So. |
| F | Jason Maxiell | Cincinnati | Jr. |
| F | Rodney Carney | Memphis | So. | PLAYER OF YEAR: Jason Maxiell Look for Maxiell's numbers (11.7 ppg, 6.6 rpg) to rise as he moves to a comfortable power forward spot this season. Scored 20 or more points on four occasions last season.NEWCOMER OF YEAR: Dameon Mason, Marquette ESPN.com C-USA Projections: Click Here |
This is the conference that brought in DePaul with a 24-year streak of winning records -- and saw the Blue Demons go 11-18, 3-23 and 7-23 their first three years in the league.
This is the conference that had Clyde Drexler the coach, not Clyde Drexler the player. Over-the-hill Denny Crum, not Hall of Fame Denny Crum. Joey Meyer, not Ray Meyer. Too much Murry Bartow, not enough Gene Bartow.
This is the conference that looked like it had a national title winner until Cincinnati's Kenyon Martin broke his leg on a fluke collision in the paint one minute into the 2000 C-USA tournament quarterfinals. The Bearcats wound up eliminated in the NCAA second round by Tulsa.
This is the conference that saw Rodney White, Alton Ford, DerMarr Johnson, Kenny Satterfield, Lorenzen Wright, Samaki Walker and Steven Hunter all hurt the league -- and themselves -- by going pro too early.
This is the conference that hurt the power ratings for its signature sport by bringing in TCU and East Carolina to help upgrade football to, um, mediocre.
C-USA will carry on in marginalized form, grabbing a few schools from the Western Athletic Conference. Between now and then we will have an awkward Long Goodbye.
The teams widely picked to finish 1-2-3 in the league (Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette) are all leaving. Holdover Southern Mississippi basically sold its home game to evacuee Marquette, agreeing to play the game in Green Bay. And the conference tournament will be held in Cincinnati.
| Inside C-USA |
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 Take an Insiders look at Conference USA with Blue Ribbon's 2003-04 team reports:
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The games should again be good, especially now that the league has scrapped its skewed divisional format and cleared the way for top teams to play each other more often. This league could easily repeat its four-bid season of a year ago, or even exceed it.
Cincinnati could be back to the physically overpowering program we're used to seeing. Marquette will make a serious run at defending its league title, despite the loss of Dwyane Wade. Louisville could be an awesome offensive team, even without leading scorer and assist man Reece Gaines. UAB returns its top three scorers from a surprise run to the league tournament final. Charlotte might have the league's best newcomer in 7-footer Martin Iti. DePaul returns four starters and Memphis has five solid returnees and a good recruiting class.
Yet when the league held its media day last week in Chicago, the dominant topics of conversation were not Francisco Garcia's dazzling skills, Tom Crean's sparkling championship ring, all those muscles at Cincinnati or all those guards at Memphis.
"Ninety-nine percent of the questions were not about teams or players," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. "They were about the new conference. It'll be the same thing next year.
"Every league meeting you have, the theme is to promote your league, promote camaraderie, say you're the best. We're going to go through two seasons. How do you promote? Which league are you promoting?"
This year will be like a divorced couple remaining in the same house. There's no avoiding each other -- or avoiding the bad feelings. In fact, the current football season in the Big East should offer a prelude of what could be in C-USA hoops.
Some Virginia Tech and Miami folks are suggesting that their football teams, ticketed for the Atlantic Coast Conference, are getting no breaks from officials. Syracuse turned its football game Oct. 18 against outgoing Boston College into a mini-crusade, crushing the Eagles. West Virginia went wild in celebration of its upset of Virginia Tech last week (then again, the pyros in Morgantown will light fires for the slightest of provocation).
Paranoid Louisville fans thought league refs were persecuting the Cards for hand-checking last February; how suspicious will they be when the Cardinals get in foul trouble this year? And what will Screamer Emeritus Bob Huggins be doing the first time strongman Jason Maxiell is called for a charge in a league game?
"I've known Dale (Kelley, league supervisor of officials) a long time," Huggins said. "That is not going to happen from Dale Kelley."
We'll see if Huggins is saying that in February. This is the preseason, a time of peace and optimism and minimizing potential problems.
"You think the crowds are going to be more hostile to us than they were before?" asked Huggins, who knows the league villain role well. "It's impossible to be any worse at Charlotte. The people of Memphis can't be any more riled up by us."
The Memphis coach, John Calipari, is spinning his school's untenable position like Karl Rove. The Tigers look like the big loser in Realignment Mania, left out of the upgrading contingent and a cut above C-USA's remnants. But Calipari was selling his program as impervious to mid-major conference affiliation, saying he's excited about the future.
"I think our basketball program is protected because we're a national program, and that's not going to change," Calipari said. "I think we may be the biggest beneficiary of this whole thing, and everyone's looking at me saying, 'Wait a minute, what are you talking about?' Wait three years and let's see."
It was a nice try, and it afforded Huggins a fine line at his friend's expense.
"If all this happens, Cal will become the highest-paid mid-major coach in the history of college basketball," Huggs said. "Why wouldn't he be happy?"
Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com
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