Bracket Breakdown

Tracking C-USA teams with a chance at making the NCAA Tournament

This article appears as a follow-up to "Memphis might be lonely in March," an article which profiled the chances of Memphis UAB, UTEP and Houston and first appeared on CUSA-fans.com on 02/16.

• Memphis is a lock for the NCAA Tournament, and with Texas losing on Sunday, the Tigers look like they are going to be a #1 seed barring a loss somewhere along the line in the next couple of weeks.

• UAB is 53rd in the RPI and is 0-2 vs. Top 50 opponents. Those are not NCAA-worthy numbers. However, they are 5-3 against teams ranked 51-100 and 7-4 on the road. Right now, I would put the Blazers in, but they still have lots of work to do. If they can beat Memphis at home, they would be a lock.

• UTEP is 76th in the RPI and is 0-3 vs. Top 50 opponents. What makes matters worse is that they only have one Top 100 win (UAB) and have 3 losses in the sub-100 RPI range. Unless they win the conference tournament, I don’t see the Miners getting an at-large bid. Moreover, they are no longer the clear-cut 2nd best team in the league. With the loss to Memphis, they are now tied with UAB and are only one game ahead of Houston.

• Houston is 56th in the RPI and has the two best wins of the bubble teams, over Arizona and at LSU. If they can go 2-1 to finish the season (which would mean beating either UTEP or Memphis on the road) and then making a run to the C-USA title game, the Cougars might have a good case for a bid. However, I don’t see them winning either of their road games down the stretch. Losses to Central Florida and Rice aren’t helping, either.
  

Other Conference USA Notes and Observations

• The highly-anticipated matchup between UTEP and Memphis was long way from living up to its expectations. With a chance to represent for Conference USA, the two teams put to sleep a national audience and basically showed that Conference USA was a one-bid league. The game lacked any sort of excitement—Memphis did not even get to show off their run and gun game, and UTEP didn’t get to show off John Tofi.
• UAB picked up a couple more easy wins this week against inferior competition. However, that has been the case since conference play started. The Blazers beat up on the lower portion of the league, and then lose when a quality team appears on their schedule. In order to get a bid to the Tournament, UAB needs to demonstrate that they can beat good, NCAA Tournament-caliber teams. East Carolina and Southern Mississippi aren’t going to be in the Field of 65.
• Houston’s season comes down to their final three games. They face UTEP in the aforementioned matchup on Saturday, host Rice on Wednesday, and then finish the season at Memphis on Sunday. The Cougars likely have to win 2 of 3 down the stretch to get serious consideration from the Selection Committee. It wouldn’t hurt if one of those wins was on the road against Memphis.
• SMU has the third best scorer in the league (Bryan Hopkins) and the third best rebounder in the league (Devon Pearson). What about assists? Yeah, their leading assist man, Hopkins, is 16th in the conference at a less-than-impressive 2.9 per game. That could explain why they are 4-8 in the conference. Five teams have at least two players with more assists per game than Hopkins.
• While on the topic of SMU, too bad Bamba Fall is not much of a scorer or rebounder. The 7-1 freshman from Senegal leads C-USA in blocks at 3.2 per game. He has blocked at least four shots nine times this season.
• With all the turnovers UAB forces, it’s interesting to see that only one player (Squeaky Johnson) is in the Top 10 in the conference in steals.
• Only six players in the league shoot higher than 40% from three-point range. To put it in perspective, the Big East has 19 players shooting at that clip or better, while the 8-team Patriot League has the same amount as Conference USA.
• Props to Marshall’s Mark Patton on his 36-point, 13-rebound effort against SMU in an overtime win last week. He shot 13 of 17 from the floor, and, most importantly, he played 41 of 45 minutes.