Even if the competition level appears to be nearly the same based on NET rankings, the school names in the AAC are much more recognized by the general public and that is a huge step up. Being left behind would have been a huge step backwards & I honestly believe the AAC will be a better conference than CUSA was this season. We’re essentially replacing the bottom half of CUSA with the bottom half of the AAC. That has to be a net gain.
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If you are referring to AAC vs CUSA one major distinction is the quality of experienced coaching. Large gap between the conferences the last 5 or 10 yrs…. One complaint against Hill is he doesnt subscribe to that or we just
dont have the money.
Given the state of our basketball program it really doesn’t make a damn what conference we’re in if we’re being honest.
As far as the past goes, you can say we weren’t a good fit in the A10 but that was a damn good hoops league then. Going there wasn’t a step down we just didn’t hold up our end of the bargain.
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I agree basketball wise; it was a step down in perception
It was a good basketball conference but Houston, Memphis, Louisville, and Cincy were different animals than what was in the A-10.
Yep, Houston was total 
back then. Remember Clyde Drexler being more concerned about how he looked than how his team - at his alma mater no less - performed.
Oh sure but Houston is a prestigious proud program. I’ll die on the hill that it was a step down, but the A-10 was good and we utterly failed in it.
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A10 was a drastic drop down.
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A-10 offered basically same number of opportunities for an NCAA bid as C-USA 1.0, which was 3+ per year. Of course, a lot has changed since then as the P6 have gotten their way in tweaking the metrics for an at large.
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From 1996 to 2005 A10 vs CUSA Conference RPI rankings
A10 best finish: 7th (04, 02, 02, 98, 97)
CUSA best finish: 3rd (00) next best finish was 5th (04)
A10 WORST finish: 14th (05)
CUSA WORST finish: 9th (05, 02)
A10 Avg RPI rank: 8.3
CUSA Avg RPI rank: 6.9
Not a huge difference but CUSA certainly better
Then add the power of the branding differences (of the teams in those conferences) on top of that and that’s what takes CUSA over the top imo. Metrics are better…Perception was WAY better (due to branding).
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Bottom line is we need to take care of business over the next few years in case the dominoes fall again.
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We also need to win to give us something to talk about instead of wallowing in the past.
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That was exactly the point I was trying to make. Conference affiliation is just one more in an infinitely long line of excuses those who delude themselves are more than happy to make.
I agree, but we owned them during CUSA 1.0 days!
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We need to stack CBI’s
https://twitter.com/Russ_Steinberg/status/1659583447596187648?cxt=HHwWgIC20cmWg4guAAAA
not sure how legit this guy is but it was interesting
