2024-25 Conference Previews: AAC

American Athletic Conference, née AAC

Tier 1

UAB
Memphis

Tier 2

North Texas
Wichita State
South Florida
Florida Atlantic
Charlotte

Tier 3

Tulsa
East Carolina
Temple
Tulane

Tier 4

UTSA
Rice

This is the one conference you can’t be too offended by realignment in/around because it was transient in the first place. The AAC has been around for 11 years and has felt like an Established Part of the Sport™ for maybe five of those? For a while there (2016-2021, roughly) they were pretty interesting on a national scale because they kept producing legitimate title threats. Now they produce potential second weekend teams and the six best schools in it have all left (Louisville, ACC) for (Rutgers, B1G) greener (UConn, Big East) pastures (Cincinnati/Houston/UCF, B12).

Mostly I feel as if there’s very little to hang your hat on in this conference. Is it generically good with real two-bid potential? Of course, because in its 11-year existence they’ve managed to send at least two teams to every NCAA Tournament they’ve been around for. But do I feel like everything changes here every single season? Yes. The following is from Andrew Weatherman, which tells you that no conference returned fewer minutes on average from 2023-24 than the AAC.

Then there’s the part where the average coach in this league has completed 1.86 seasons at his school. 1.86! EIGHT of the 13 coaches here have coached one or zero seasons at their current place of employment. The longest-tenured coach, Penny Hardaway, is the one under the most fire nationally and regionally. The second-longest tenured coach, Ron Hunter, has established a solid base at Tulane but still has just a 40% success rate at going .500 or better in conference play.

None of this is objectively bad, but what it adds up to is a conference that frankly feels like it has no identifiable style or flavor to it. Particularly stark is the fact that the team generally seen as the favorite here, Memphis, has a fanbase that does not want to be in this conference. The current makeup gives me the same feeling as being five years old and mixing a bunch of Crayola paint together because you think you’re making the coolest color ever, only for it to be a muddled mess.

Anyway, I have a surprise choice for our conference winner here, or at least it seems surprising based on the general consensus. I’ve seen almost no one with UAB at the top, despite almost everyone having UAB in the top two. This is confusing to me, because UAB has the better coach, better top player, better-fitting roster, finished ahead of a more talented Memphis team last season, and has made the same number of NCAA Tournaments as Memphis (two) post-pandemic despite having half the budget.

Now, would I be saying all of this if Memphis didn’t have the offseason they had? No, but they did, so here we are. What should be a top-25(ish) Memphis team on paper might not be top 50; what should be a top-80(ish) UAB team on paper likely will be in or near the top 50 under Andy Kennedy. You’re looking at a roster that shot 37% from three and 52% on twos last year, has good offensive numbers pretty much all over the place, could be absurdly dominant on the boards, and, again, has the best player in the conference.

Yaxel Lendeborg somewhat surprisingly opted to return to UAB for an other year despite getting a second-round draft grade from several analysts I follow. Perhaps he can play his way into the late first, but even if he doesn’t, he’s a game-changer. At 6’9” Lendeborg is pretty ridiculous, a guy with the playmaking skills of a wing, the rebounding skills of a burly center, the ability to drive from the perimeter with solid success, and someone Kennedy trusts to do functionally anything on offense. Look at this play type split; ignoring that OREBs are #1 (which is fine) he can do literally everything at least competently.

I think more notable is the comps Synergy gives him, both in D1 and at the next level. They’re wildly diverse. The best D1 comp is either Johni Broome (per Synergy) or 2012 Mike Muscala (per the stats); the best NBA one it gives is either Evan Mobley or Chet Holmgren. Generally for players on Synergy, you’ll at least see someone with a similarity score of 85 or above, but Lendeborg does not have anyone above an 80 or above Mobley’s 74 at the next level. He’s a true 1-of-1.

Around Lendeborg is a roster with quality returners and quality transfers. That’s why I’m in, because it’s very plausible the top end of this roster has yet to be fully realized. Kennedy made two unreasonably good portal pickups with Tyren Moore (via Georgia Southern) and Greg Gordon (via Iona).

Rare is it that I commit to being fully in on any up-transfer, but Moore was a 41% 3PT shooter and legitimately unbelievable scorer in a below-average offense without any talent around him. It’s very notable to me that GASO’s offense went from top ~150 in the country to bottom ~50 without him on the court. Gordon is a wing that simply gets to the rim whenever he wants and does this despite a bizarre mental block that’s caused him to shoot between 41% and 52% from the free throw line in his three years of college. It’s hard to square with the fact he’s shot between 32-38% from three on low-but-reasonable volume. There might just be room to roam from deep here.

Many of the other pieces that are back work, too. Alejandro Vasquez is a great shooter (39% 3PT, 82% FT) that can rip from all over. Butta Johnson has an awesome name, shot 36% from three last year, and hit 47% of his midrange twos. Christian Coleman isn’t much of a shooter but is the best defender on the roster and works well in the shot-blocker/rim-runner role. Even transfer Bradley Ezewiro, who Coleman is theoretically battling for a starting spot, is a dominant rebounder with a remarkably low turnover rate for a back-to-the-basket big.

If anything, I might not be high enough on UAB offensively. It’s got a serious shot at finishing top-20 nationally for the first time in the 28-year KenPom era. The problem will be defense, because Coleman is the only player on the roster who broke even in Defensive Box Plus-Minus. DBPM isn’t everything but that’s pretty scary given the 198th-place defensive finish last year. Can Kennedy simply get this unit to, like, 131st? If so, this is a top-50 team nationally and your AAC favorite, along with a potential 10/11 seed.

If not UAB it’ll be Memphis, who’s everyone else’s favorite, I guess. By on-court talent alone, they should be. For the third or fourth time in his now seven-season tenure, Penny Hardaway turned everything over from a highly disappointing team that underachieved by any metric you might choose. Out the door is all but one player (Nick Jourdain, a slash-and-D stretch big); in the door are eight transfers and two freshmen. At the time of writing there are 11 scholarship players on the roster, with Penny claiming in the press he may add a 12th. Never mind the part where fall classes have been in session already for six weeks.

In terms of pure portal talent, the only schools who have serious arguments to have added more total value are all teams with new coaches. All eight players got at least 11 MPG at their previous schools; collectively they averaged 85 PPG, 8 SPG, and 4.5 BPG. As surface-level numbers for a team under a coach that has won no fewer than 20 games in any of his six seasons, this is a great haul. Does it actually fit together? Well, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.

The headline add here is Tyrese Hunter, now on his third school in four seasons after stops at Iowa State and Texas. The freshman year promise Hunter showed has kind of plateaued into him being a pretty average P5 starting point guard who isn’t a plus shooter (31% 3PT career), is inefficient (97 career ORtg), and has as many turnovers as assists. All that being said, he’s a good shooter when left open and is a plus finisher down low. Three years of college evidence also showcases him as a good defender that’s tough to break at the point of attack.

If ranking my actual favorite adds on the roster he might be fourth. All of PJ Haggerty, Tyreek Smith, Colby Rogers, and possibly even Dain Dainja interest me more as positive impact guys. Haggerty is the clear headliner for me: a swaggering high-usage guard who plays like a better version of Judah Mintz and overcomes a weak jumper with a tenacity at driving to the rim that will be above anyone else in the AAC. I don’t think he repeats his 21.2 PPG from last year but 18-19 is absolutely plausible. Rogers is another easy explanation: a 41% 3PT shooter at Wichita last year who might be a horrific finisher for his size but cannot, under any circumstances, be left open inside 30 feet. He’s frightening when he pulls up for three.

Smith and Dainja didn’t get the minutes to sway many last year at SMU and Illinois, respectively, but both have terrific per-minute stats that have me highly interested. Problematic is the fact that they’re functionally the same player. Both are rim-running bigs that can’t shoot. Dainja is burlier and posts up more, while Smith is highly dangerous in P&R. Smith is far better defensively but isn’t nearly as good of a down-low scorer as Dainja. I think playing the two together is a potential spacing disaster, and I am 100% convinced Dainja came to Memphis to play 25+ MPG.

NOTE: The day before this arrived in your inbox, Smith left Memphis. Alas.

This is all despite still having Moussa Cisse, who struggled at Ole Miss last year but is a terrific rim protector, as well as Jourdain, an underrated interior defender in his own right. Someone, among three different centers who should be starting, has to sit on the bench for long stretches. Or on the perimeter, how you also have Baraka Okojie, who has the same exact shot diet as Haggerty but is far less effective at it.

I guess that might sum up the problem for me. I’ve never found a throughline in Penny’s roster-building logic at any point. I spent a lot of the 2021-22 offseason telling anyone who would listen that Memphis didn’t have nearly enough shooting to have the season they wanted. Last year’s roster had nothing in the way of quality perimeter defenders and was heavily reliant on good-not-great rim protection to save them.

This roster still doesn’t have enough shooting (four players on the entire team attempted more than 40 threes last year). Instead of finding players that complement one another, Hardaway has three starter-level centers that will create spacing mayhem if they play together, a point guard that graded out as a negative offensive player in better systems, wings that shoot the ball very well but only one of which can consistently generate their own jumpers, and a projected opening night starting five that has no players between 6’5” and 6’8”, creating a potential wing defense issue that is only fixed when PJ Carter, who did not start for a bad UTSA team, takes the floor.

This is my problem with Penny: the talent will always be there because he’s Penny. At its base, this gives you a pretty reasonable floor with a tantalizing ceiling. But we’re now seven seasons into this project, and at exactly one point (2022-23) has he gotten good results for a full season out of his guys. You’ve got three guards who have to have the ball in their hands to be in rhythm offensively. You have three centers that can’t shoot and all play the same position. You have one stretch big that’s a career 29% deep shooter. You have one wing that didn’t start for the 254th-ranked team in college basketball.

S1430-32 | Worker Hammering Square Peg into Round Hole --- I… | Flickr — Penny Hardaway building a roster

If anything, I guess this is the ultimate acid test of talent versus fit.

You may notice that neither of our Tier 1 teams feel like obvious standout winners. If they falter, Tier 2 has the best shot to capitalize, starting with North Texas, who has another quality coach on their hands in Ross Hodge. Despite losing 66% of minutes from the previous year, the Mean Green finished 74th in KenPom last year. You may not have heard about this, because they went 19-15 and barely cracked .500 in conference play. There’s a pretty good reason for this: horrific, horrific close game luck.

Not only did UNT go 4-11 in games decided by six or fewer points, they posted these shooting splits in games that were within six points in the final eight minutes.

North Texas offense in the final eight minutes of close games: 31% 3PT, 17% midrange 2PT
North Texas offense in all other possessions: 38% 3PT, 35% midrange 2PT

Adjusted for awful shooting luck, North Texas had the scoring margin of a 12-6 AAC team that would’ve been around 20-10 overall in the regular season. You feel a lot differently about a team that beats St. John’s (actual result: 53-52 loss), UAB (82-79 OT), and UTSA (64-62). Would that have been enough to grab them an NCAAT spot? No, but it would’ve gotten them the same conference and overall record as eventual AAC champ UAB.

One figures luck cannot be that bad for Ross Hodge a second time, particularly with a roster heavily rebuilt through the portal. All five starters are gone, but every single transfer Hodge brought in has a positive DBPM, and while I’m very unconvinced of the offensive talent here I think this might be a top-40 defense nationally. The best breakout shots here are Atin Wright from Drake and Latrell Jossell from Stephen F. Austin. Both were All-Conference caliber players at their previous schools, and Wright in particular should have almost no trouble adjusting from the MVC to AAC.

They’ll need another couple transfers to hit. The one I am most intrigued by, and the one that really needs to work, is Johnathan Massie from Longwood. Massie is decidedly not efficient, a 38% 2PT shooter who is a horrific finisher down low. But he is outstanding defensively, a good shooter from deep, and most notably, has been the lead offensive option before. No one else here has. If he doesn’t work out I’m pretty worried about the offense, because everyone else here is a role player.

All of Jasper Floyd (via Fairfield), Brennen Lorient (via FAU), Grant Newell (via Cal), and returners Rondel Walker and Matthew Stone are somewhere on the spectrum of very good to elite defensively. Collectively, this is a disgusting defense to try and tangle with. It also might be a disgusting offense to watch. The only plus shot-makers are Wright and Jossell, both of whom are 6’1”. UNT’s biggest strength in recent years has been overcoming a lot of total size with quality size at point, with three of the last four PGs being 6’4” or 6’5”. That’s a small pair for your point of attack. I trust Hodge to figure it out, though I’m not holding my breath for a top-100 offense yet.

If not them, do you like what Paul Mills is doing at Wichita State yet? Perhaps it’s all still TBD, but in Year Zero with an almost entirely new roster and having his starting point guard miss almost all of November/December, I thought he did a fine-enough job. 15-19 won’t get you positive headlines at Wichita by any means but an awful December/January (2-11 record) turned into a pretty nice close to the season: a 6-7 record, sure, but with wins over SMU, UAB, and Memphis. You can build on that, particularly when you return 55% of scoring and hit the portal harder than any non-Memphis contender.

Gone is Colby Rogers, which is a bummer, but Wichita functionally gets four of their five starters back and replaces Rogers with Georgia-via-Longwood transfer Justin Hill, who I’ve never graded out as much of a quality shooter but I love as a passer and creator. I think it says something reasonable that Hill, despite being 5’11”, held up well as a starter in the SEC and generally garnered respect from the average opponent. Wichita didn’t have a true point last year and suffered mightily on offense because of it, so this should help.

The returning starters all do something I like but in different ways. Xavier Bell’s efficiency stats look awful, but he may have a top-10 floater in all of college basketball. Harlond Beverly is a true plus perimeter defender that posted five steals and five blocks in that AAC Tournament win over Memphis, concluding an eight-game run to the finish where he averaged three combined steals/blocks a game. Ronnie DeGray and Quincy Ballard form a good tango in the frontcourt; DeGray is a stretch big and solid shooter while Ballard is absolutely hellacious at the rim on both ends.

This is a good group; it will be better if Mills is able to put one of these four on the bench. Corey Washington comes in from St. Peter’s, where he dropped a 114 ORtg on 26% USG and posted a +4.5 BPM on an awful offensive team. If these numbers mean nothing to you, here is the full list of players (2002-present) to post a 110 or better ORtg on 25%+ USG with a +4 or better BPM at St. Peter’s:

Alternately, here’s the last two guys to do that in the MAAC as an underclassman: Walter Clayton, Jr. and Jalen Pickett. I think you might be aware of those guys. If Mills can find it within himself to let Washington cook, this team could be awesome. If he holds firm to the starting four plus Hill, I like but don’t love what he’s doing.

South Florida, along with a later entry in this tier, was the story of last season: a true worst-to-first story under first-year HC Amir Abdur-Rahim, who did similarly great work at Kennesaw State. The challenge is now following that up, which is easier said than done when the top three scorers all used their giant years for USF to transfer elsewhere. The 4-6 scorers are back, along with some key transfers, but that factor plus some remarkable close game luck (10-4 in games decided by six or less) has me doubting a repeat.

Recall the North Texas close game stats from earlier, then try the defensive version of that on for size:

USF opponents, last eight minutes of close games (195 possessions): 25% 3PT, 39% 2PT
USF opponents, all other possessions: 32% 3PT, 49% 2PT

You can imagine a world where Wichita State doesn’t shoot 2-19 from three in a 72-68 USF win or USF doesn’t survive a Temple upset bid 75-69 thanks to them shooting 2-14 on midrange twos. Still, 16-2 AAC is 16-2 AAC, and AAR has the respect of everyone as he should. The new challenge: finding the next elite scorer. No one on this team averaged more than 10.1 PPG last year, and while everyone’s offensive efficiency is quite high, they’ve all done it as role players. Only Cincinnati transfer Jamille Reynolds, more known for defensive prowess, cracked a 20% usage rate.

The best case here is likely returner Kobe Knox, a spot-up shooter with solid driving skills that scored 15+ points five times last year. Or maybe 5’10” Jayden Reid, an actual plus shooter (48% on 61 threes!) who is really chaotic with the ball in his hands. Or…uh…well, beyond that, it gets murky fast. Reynolds is just post-ups and is remarkably slow with a poor turnover rate. Maybe it’s three-point specialist Quincy Ademokoya?

Let me be clear: I think the defensive talent here is really nice. Corey Walker Jr. has evolved into a very good defender, as has Brandon Stroud. Reid is great defensively for 5’10”. Reynolds is a solid rim protector. The only obvious loser in this regard is Ademokoya, who you can hide on the opponent’s worst offensive player. But it seems like a bad sign to me offensively that the only plus shot-makers are a 5’10” Reid and JUCO transfer Jimmie Williams, a 22.5 PPG scorer that has much better touch inside the three-point line than beyond it. Still, I think of AAR as no worse than a top-three coach in this league. He’ll figure something out.

After a magical two-year run with now-Michigan coach Dusty May, it’s time for Florida Atlantic to reset and figure out their path forward. True flash-in-the-pan stories like FAU’s don’t often pan out with extended long-term success. May owns the only three top 150 rankings in school history at KenPom, and of the 59 different programs to make a Final Four in the KenPom era, they’re easily the lowest-rated at 191st. Even Loyola Chicago, which could be considered their closest comparison, had seven top-150 finishes before their breakthrough in 2018.

Explore Florida Atlantic — Arguably as terrifying as Richmond’s mascot

Maybe that can be John Jakus’s goal going forward. No, you’re probably never going to have another top-20 team, but can you put together five 20+ win seasons in six years the way Loyola has after their breakthrough? I think that’s reasonable, particularly in a watered-down conference. This year’s roster is basically entirely new, as every player either followed May or portaled elsewhere. The upside for Jakus: being FAU has never been better. Three different 15+ PPG scorers, a Florida State starter, and Louisville/Illinois backups all transferred in.

Of these, the best is pretty clearly Jax State transfer KyKy Tandy, a player who was the offense last year and still managed to shoot 39% on over 200 three point attempts. He’s going to thrive in a guard-heavy system build around him and Leland Walker, more of a distributor who can also shoot very well. People also like Jackson State transfer Ken Evans but to be honest I find him to be a lesser version of Tandy: score-first ball-handler who can’t hit tough twos at the same rate as Tandy and shot roughly the same percentage from three on easier shots. He is technically the SWAC POTY, for what that’s worth, but Tandy is the far better two-way player. I don’t think you can start both unless you’re really willing to sacrifice wing defense.

The other big one is Baba Miller, a 6’11” FSU transfer who never quite fit in there but may find his level here. Miller has insane potential: a stretch big who plays more like a wing offensively and can protect the rim well on the other end. If he finally blooms, FAU isn’t finishing sixth. Kaleb Glenn of Louisville: also here. Niccolo Moretti of Illinois: awesome offensive player, awful defensive, could also be awesome.

The issue, and why they’re sixth, is that I count 3.5 proven quality college pieces. (Walker/Tandy/Miller/half an Evans.) The rest is hoping that either Moretti or Glenn hit, or that one of two well-regarded internationals - center Matas Vokietaitis and electric shooter Max Langenfeld - will work out in their first college try. There’s a dangerous path here for FAU where they’re quite good offensively but awful on the other end, all the while only having six players they actively desire to play in a basketball game.

The other huge story last year was Charlotte, who made a run to AAC #2 behind a then-interim Aaron Fearne and a ragtag roster. Much like USF, Fearne’s heroes used their excellent run at Charlotte to springboard to other schools. The top three scorers from last year are all gone, and just one starter - PG Nik Graves - is back for another go. If Fearne pulls it off twice I’ll be stunned, but I’ve seen stranger.

Graves is the obvious best player on the roster and should be the star the team is built around. Somewhere between a 1 and a 2, Graves is a very efficient offensive piece that is tremendous at playing bigger than his 6’3” frame. His 0.65 FTA/FGA ratio was 36th-highest in the country out of 1,300 qualified players last year. That’s a guy you can work with.

Everything else here, well, TBD. It speaks a bit to the rest of the AAC rosters and to the overall transient aspects of the conference’s coaches that Charlotte ranks this high despite a lot of uncertainty. There’s not a real marquee add here; the closest would be getting DePaul starter Jeremiah Oden, an actively horrendous two-way player last year, or Vlad Goldin’s backup Giancarlo Rosado from FAU, a guy who’s at least a solid AAC-level piece. Outside of Graves, plus shooting at the college level is 404 File Not Found, and no one on the roster grades out all that well at rim protection. I still think that the roster itself has enough talent to work out fine, but of the Tier 2 squads this was the closest to Tier 3.

Speaking of which! 4,000+ words in and there are somehow six more teams in this conference. This is what you pay for, people. Even though this one is a free post. Tier 3 consists of teams all ranked between 129th and 182nd at Torvik, or alternately, 117th and 182nd at Haslametrics. Can one of these teams be a pleasant surprise and finish fourth in the league? Sure, but all four have potentially huge gaps between their floor and ceiling.

Tulsa, I guess, is the best of these. They return the most minutes (54%), they have a coach that I still believe in (Eric Konkol), and perhaps most impressively, they got a starter at a Big Ten school (Minnesota) to transfer over. Is that starter any good? TBD, but hey, I can see the vision, particularly on defense. I can also see the vision for how this ends poorly and we’re unfortunately talking about Konkol’s deeply concerning performance through three years at Tulsa.

Still, a reasonable case for optimism exists here, and for once, it’s largely on the shoulders of returners with a couple transfers sprinkled in. Konkol got former Louisiana Tech starter Keaston Willis to come in last year, but an injury cut his season short after just two games. A career 37% 3PT shooter on high volume is always a nice add. Jared Garcia is a quality rebounder and shot-blocking center who happens to have hit 37 threes last year. Tyshawn Archie should be playing more minutes, as his +3.9 BPM leads the team. But they need two guys to work to get out of Tier 3: Dwon Odom, a delightful Georgia State transfer PG with the shot diet of DeMar DeRozan, and Braeden Carrington, the aforementioned Minnesota transfer who must overcome a weak jumper to be a plus contributor.

East Carolina is in a similar boat: Year Three coach with unimpressive results to-date, returning a couple starters but not much else, reliant on transfers to take them to the next level. Mike Schwartz was the original designer of Tennessee’s perennially-elite defense prior to taking the ECU job, and while the ECU defense has outperformed the offense so far, the results have been underwhelming on the whole. Through two years, Schwartz/ECU are 13-23 in conference play and consistently get out-shot in most games.

This year’s floor should be higher because somehow, Schwartz convinced star RJ Felton to come back for his senior year. Felton posted a 113 ORtg on 24% USG last year, shooting 49% 2PT/36% 3PT and posting a +5 Offensive BPM. Getting one of the 10-15 best players in last year’s AAC back is a huge win. So was convincing Yann Farell of the Bonnies, a true 3-and-D wing with a great shot, to come in. Those are two real plus guys to build around; now time to find a third and fourth to hang in this league. The best shots for my money are tiny PG Julien Soumaoro from Gardner-Webb, a 13 PPG scorer last year that should start over incumbent Cam Hayes, or Temple transfer Jordan Riley, a fantastic defender who’s an offensive game away from being a seriously useful piece. I hope Schwartz puts it together, but I can’t predict it just yet.

Temple had perhaps the strangest end-of-season run I can remember, one in which players were accused of gambling on their own games. The university itself was reviewing the potential scandal! Nothing’s come out on it since, so perhaps it was all for naught, but it was the first serious college basketball warning strike for a problem many people have been telling you for years. Then they made the AAC Tournament Final after a magical run and everyone completely forgot about the gambling.

Mark Mcgwire Simpsons GIF - Mark Mcgwire Simpsons Dingers - Discover & Share GIFs — The results of the FBI investigation into Temple basketball’s bank account

Unfortunately for us, the true protagonists of history, four starters from that team are now gone, so HC Adam Fisher has to rebuild once more. He did so in a truly fascinating way: plucking Jamal Mashburn Jr. from New Mexico and Lynn Greer III from St. Joe’s. Both are longtime starting guards for their schools; Greer is more of a distributor and driver while Mashburn is famous for adoring the midrange two at a time when it’s never been less popular. Temple is a great test for Hooper vs. Player, if you remember that. Mashburn and Greer combined to score 25 PPG last year, and Mashburn in particular has had some incredible games in his career. But by impact metrics, these are two guys who grade out as active drags on their teams, and Mashburn in particular is heavily reliant on plus shooting from the midrange to eliminate an otherwise-awful 2PT%.

Beyond that, the case for optimism lies upon two Power Five transfers: Shane Dezonie from Vandy (who was here last year) and Jameel Brown from Penn State. Both were on bad teams, but both can shoot and space the floor in a way Mashburn and Greer cannot do by themselves. That, plus returning forward Steve Settle III (a potential First Team All-AAC Defender), makes for an interesting sauce to taste. I just don’t know how many times throughout the season I’ll enjoy it.

Ron Hunter’s run at Tulane is another sort of acid test thing that I guess determines how much you value history. On one hand, going 35-53 in conference play across five seasons while Tulane’s football team has had their best five-year stretch in five decades is a tough pill to swallow. On the other, Hunter has finished in the top-150 at KenPom four straight seasons. Tulane had three top-150 finishes total from 2001 through 2020. I think he’s objectively done well at an extremely bad basketball program, but if it’s enough likely depends on what you personally value.

Sadly for Ron, he lost his top six scorers to either graduation or the portal, so this is a complete teardown/rebuild in a year where he could really use some wins. The best player on the team is Georgetown transfer Rowan Brumbaugh, who at least shot 37% and graded out well in a terrible spot. Same for Michael Eley, who was dragged down by a disastrous Siena team and should be more like his freshman self (104 ORtg, 23% USG, 34% 3PT). Everything else…well, we don’t know.

No one else on the roster has ever averaged more than 3.6 PPG in college. Returners Gregg Glenn III and Percy Daniels may start, which says a lot because they played 9.7 and 6.6 MPG last year. There are four Power Five transfers here, but two (Tyler Ringgold and Mari Jordan) both redshirted at previous schools. It’s a testament to how I feel about Hunter that they got to jump to Tier 3. (He overachieves his preseason KenPom rating by +1.8 points on average, too.)

Tier 4 represents two Year Zero situations where the rosters are almost 100% turned over and the vibe of the rosters is more “filled out” than “fitting in,” if that makes sense.

UTSA pulled off a tremendous coup by hiring Austin Claunch away from Alabama’s staff. Claunch is somehow still just 34 years old, which is crazy because he’s already lived a lifetime at Division I. He took Nicholls to a 90-61 record and multiple conference titles in a five-year run before going to Alabama last year for a bump in pay. I think he’s an astonishingly bright guy and it is crazy to me that we’re only four years apart. He feels 15 years older.

The problem is what I mentioned: filling out the roster with whatever pieces you can find. There are a few objectively phenomenal adds here in Damari Monsanto from Wake Forest or Raekwon Horton from James Madison. I can even get down with adding volume shooters like Tai’Reon Joseph from Southern or Primo Spears from Florida State. But I cannot really identify the fit here, because there are just two quality shooters on the roster (Jonnivius Smith and Marcus Millender), and it seems that neither may start.

The backcourt of Spears and Joseph will be actively annoying to watch; both ranked among the national leaders in USG% last year, and Spears in particular has not had a winning impact on any team he’s played on in college. This is a volume-over-fit fix job, one that will likely be fully turned over next March because all five of the projected starters are seniors. My initial thought is that it’s a lot like Claunch’s first Nicholls team: spurts of excellence offensively with spurts of total disaster on defense.

Rice hired Rob Lanier after Lanier was unjustly fired by SMU for the crime of not being a big-enough name. I assume SMU will out-rank Rice in KenPom because that’s how things work, but this was ridiculous when it happened and is still dumb now. Anyway! Rice does have one advantage over UTSA in that they return a single starter (Alem Huseinovic), who happens to have shot 40% from three last year. I like that! I do not like too much about the rest of the roster, sorry.

Lanier was hired midway through the NCAA Tournament at a school that does not spend money on sports, so this roster’s understandably a rush job. The best player here is likely SMU transfer Jalen Smith, a 38% deep shooter with positive two-way metrics, but he’s very much a role player that isn’t going to use many possessions. That honor falls to Trae Broadnax from USC Upstate, a generically fine guard, or perhaps Kellen Amos from Central Connecticut. When you’re hoping that a fine-not-great player from the Big South or NEC is your go-to scorer in the AAC…yeah.

FOUR PREDICTIONS:

The AAC Player of the Year is UAB’s Yaxel Lendeborg, to no real surprise.
At least one Memphis player quits the team mid-season. (Free space on the bingo card.) NOTE: Not even 24 hours before this got published, Tyreek Smith quit the team. I wrote this in August!
UTSA’s Primo Spears scores 30 points and 7 points in back-to-back games on the same number of field goal attempts (15).
This is a two-bid league, but just barely, as the second team is a First Four participant. Close your eyes and picture a beautiful March Tuesday night as Memphis and USC tangle for the right to play Xavier.

Stats By Will

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Stats By Will

2024-25 Conference Previews: AAC

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American Athletic Conference, née AAC

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