Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2013-14 season.
NEW YORK-- The American Athletic Conference will hold its annual postseason tournament at FexExForum in Memphis, where fans of Memphis, Louisville and Cincinnati should assure sellout crowds in that tradition-rich college basketball town by rekindling memories of the great rivalries between those teams in the Great Midwest and Conference USA
Louisville may well be the best team in the country by March and both Memphis and UConn have the potential to be second-weekend NCAA tournament teams.
But The American would like to create the image of a deep, talented league in its first year and produce fourth and fifth teams like Cincinnati and SMU that will be intriguing to the selection committee.
Both Cincinnati and Memphis jumped at the chance at showcase their teams on a national stage when they accepted invitations to play in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden this week. The American may have a Midwest flavor, but commissioner Mike Aresco is smart enough to realize the league needs maintain its Eastern ties to maintain national relevance.
"We need to be here,'' Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said after his 8-2 team, which was coming off a 64-57 loss to crosstown rival Xavier, defeated previously unbeaten Pitt, 44-43, in the first game of a marquee ESPN doubleheader that looked like a replay of an old Big East battle. Memphis played like a ranked team during a highly competitive 77-75 loss to SEC contender Florida in the second game, providing The American with some valuable street credibility as it builds its brand.
UConn has defeated Maryland and Indiana at the Barclays Center and the Garden, establishing its top-10 credentials with big victories in this media capital.
"This is a great league this year at the top,'' Cronin said. "Obviously, we were disappointed when the Big East broke up, but we look at this as an opportunity. We want to play in games like this, in big arenas like the Garden because we do so much recruiting in the New York area and it gives our kids a chance to come home. We've already got NC State and Nebraska on the schedule next year, along with Xavier; and we're working on a game against Michigan.
"We'd like to take a page out of Mark Few's schedulng book at Gonzaga and supplement our conference schedule with a strong nonleague schedule so our RPI stays high.''
It is an aggressive strategy that both UMass and Temple effectively mastered in the Atlantic 10 during the early 90s and The American needs to push in the future if the league wants to stay on pace with the BCS conferences. Right now, six of 10 American teams have acceptable RPIs of 82 or lower. But three currently have RPIs of 223 or higher and two have strength of schedule rankings in the 300s, which drag the league's overall ranking down and could eventually hurt deserving teams on the bubble.
The youthful-looking 42-year old Cronin, who replaced Andy Kennedy as the Bearcats’ head coach in 2006, has never been afraid of a challenge. He is a coach's son and a city guard who was good enough to play in Division II until a knee injury ruined those dreams. He chose to attend UC to remain close to his family and stayed close to the game by working as varsity assistant and junior varsity coach at Cincinnati's Woodward High, coaching the Five-Star, Nike and Adidas ABCD camps and directing Pittsburgh's Roundball Classic high school all-star game as an undergraduate.
Bob Huggins hired Cronin as his video coordinator right out of school in 1996, based on recommendations from wise men Howard Garfinkel and Sonny Vaccaro. Huggins quickly discovered that Cronin was a workaholic recruiter who had strong contacts in the metro-New York area through camp work and had the ability to make rapid inroads into the junior college circuit after he elevated Cronin to a full time assistant's job in 1997.
Cronin eventually left UC to work for Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino at Louisville and was a two-time Ohio Valley Coach of the Year his first head coaching job at Murray State before returning to his alma mater.
He reestablished Cincinnati’s identity by signing high profile PSAL and CHSAA recruits like guards Kenny Satterfield of Rice and Lance Stephenson of Lincoln. Cronin coached the Bearcats out of the abyss in the Big East to three consecutive NCAA appearances and a spot in the NCAA East Region Sweet 16 in 2012, the same year UC reached the championship game of the Big East tournament at the Garden.
“When I coached in the Big East, it was a monster, the best conference in America,'' Cronin said. "Syracuse, Louisville, Connecticut, Marquette, Pitt, Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova, And we had to build from scratch. There were years, early on, when it would be a fight just to get to 10th. And, if you were 14th, 15th or 16th, you might never get there.''
The jumbo-sized Big East has since dissolved. Louisville, Pitt, Notre Dame and Syracuse announced they were leaving for the Atlantic Coast Conference and the “Catholic 7” filed for divorce to form their own private-school, basketball-centered league. Cronin is attempting to take the Bearcats' back into top-25 consideration with a young team that only returns one starter -- senior wing Sean Kilpatrick from nearby Yonkers -- and is filled with players who were members of the supporting cast last season and are still finding their way.
There is no powerful low-post center like Kenyon Martin on this year's team, although the Knicks' center, who was a national Player of the Year in 2000, was in the locker room to talk to the team after shootaround and attended the game to offer support for a team was still emotionally hurting from the Xavier loss and had to play against an old conference rival that knew all their tendencies
"His message to the team was basically, 'You got to make stops to win the game,"' Cronin said.
Cincinnati is young and there are times when the Bearcats struggle offensively. Kilpatrick, who leads The American in scoring, only managed nine points on 4-or-13 shooting against Pitt and UC shot just 37.7 percent. But the Bearcats play with great energy, outrebounding Pitt, 35-27, grabbing 16 offensive rebounds and finally got by Pitt when Titus Rubles made an opposite-side rebound follow with 4.2 seconds to play. They also solidified their reputation as the league's best defensive team, limiting the Panthers, who had been averaging 82.6 points on 49 percent shooting, to just 31.4 percent on 11-for-35 shooting. UC held Pitt without a field goal for a 13:43 stretch in the second half, a drought that ended with a drive by Cameron Wright that gave the Panthers a 43-42 lead with 1:04 remaining.
The Panthers had a chance to expand their lead, but Lamar Patterson missed two free throws with 21 seconds left. Cincinnati worked the clock down and Kilpatrick missed a drive, but Rubles got the rebound and scored the gamewinner. The 11 field goals were the fewest in a game for the Panthers in Jamie Dixon's 11 seasons and the second-fewest in school history.
But don't tell Cronin that it was an ugly win.
"I thought it was beautiful," Cronin said. "My father was a Hall of Fame baseball scout. If a pitcher throws a no-hitter and wins 1-0, would you call it ugly because there weren't more runs on the scoreboard?''