By
Denny O'Brien
©2009 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.
Sooner or later, Memphis
will lose another game in Conference USA. There just aren’t many signs
to indicate that it will happen anytime soon.
But eventually it will.
It most likely will occur
in some half-filled arena in Birmingham, El Paso, Houston, or Tulsa.
Someone from that mediocre bunch will experience a night when every shot
falls from beyond the arc, including a couple of halfcourt heaves to
conclude the first and second halves.
The latter will force the
first of four overtimes that finally concludes sometime after midnight
while most hoops aficionados are snoozing. One-sided officiating will
leave the Tigers with four players — two walk-ons — for the final OT,
and the Kings of C-USA will finally surrender to overwhelming boredom
and disinterest.
Though tongue-in-cheek,
that far-fetched scenario might be the only way we'll witness Memphis
lose a conference game in the near future. Because right now, Memphis
coach John Calipari is running a breeding stable of thoroughbreds that
is terribly displaced among a pasture of mules.
That sentiment is proven
each year when the NCAA selection committee unveils the 65 teams
rewarded with tickets to the Big Dance. Outside of Memphis, no other
team in C-USA so much as finds itself on the bubble with hopes of
receiving one of the committee's final invitations.
The only NCAA Tournament
path realistically available to the rest of C-USA is a three or four-day
run through the conference tournament. Considering Memphis' stranglehold
on its league 'rivals', that seems as likely as a presidential pardon
for Bernie Madoff.
For C-USA to emerge as a
legitimate, respectable basketball conference, it must significantly
alter its coaching culture. Outside of Calipari, the league is almost
exclusively a haven for coaching retreads or up-and-comers polishing
their résumés for better gigs.
The latter certainly
applies to Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik. He appears to have the Golden
Hurricane on a path similar to the ones directed by Nolan Richardson,
Tubby Smith, Steve Robinson, and Bill Self when Tulsa was an NCAA
Tournament fixture.
If Wojcik can find a way
to navigate Tulsa back into the Big Dance, it's safe to say that several
suitors will start calling. It will be hard for him to reject overtures
from schools with deeper pockets and with easier access to the NCAA
Tournament.
But if that day comes —
and Wojcik takes the Mark Few route and stays — perhaps C-USA will be
less of a basketball punch line on Selection Sunday. Maybe then it won't
be considered a few notches behind the West Coast Conference, Missouri
Valley, Horizon, or even the CAA.
Top to bottom, it's hard
to argue that C-USA is better than those leagues today.
Naturally some will argue
otherwise and point to Memphis' thorough domination of Maryland as the
basis of that argument. After all, shouldn't a blowout over a program
from the mighty ACC be a feather in C-USA's cap?
Hardly.
Maryland gave the Tigers a
similar battle to the one Tulsa did in the C-USA title game. And the
last anyone checked, the Terps had a sub-.500 record in the ACC and lost
to the likes of Morgan State and Virginia.
C-USA's current plight is
no doubt accentuated by the fact that the league once was considered
among the top handful nationally before expansion stripped almost all of
the power programs away. Multiple NCAA bids were the rule then, and
right now attaining that stature again seems unrealistic.
But there is no reason
that C-USA can't shed its one-bid reputation and have one or two others
join Memphis on the dance floor. Right now Tulsa and UAB have the best
chance of making that happen.
Until then C-USA will lack
respect in college hoops.
