(Photo by Joe Murphy/Getty Images)
It has been five years since Conference USA entered a season looking so unfamiliar. Five years ago the league suffered through a radical overhaul that sent five teams to the Big East, several more to mid-major conferences, and welcomed in a few new schools to the mix.
But heading into this season, the league will look radically different again. This time, all the same teams will return, but most without the star players that were the faces of the league last season.
Without former league powers Louisville and Marquette, Memphis rose to the top of the league, dominating Conference USA at a historic level under Coach John Calipari. But Calipari traded in Memphis Blue for Kentucky's Big Blue and with that likely goes the Tigers' 61 game winning streak and stranglehold on the league.
The door is now wide open for Tulsa who hasn't seen much postseason success since joining Conference USA prior to the 2005-2006 season. The Golden Hurricane men's basketball team is poised to regain the success it saw when the school reached at least the second round of the NCAA Tournament five times from 1997 to 2003.
Tulsa's resurgence falls on the shoulders of two returning stars and an incoming freshman that ESPN rates as the 14th best freshman point guard in the country.
Trailing Tulsa will be two teams that will make C-USA basketball relevant in Houston, Texas. Rice and Houston have historically always been strong rivals across all sports, but their basketball rivalry has typically been one-sided.
In 2010, both will field teams that will make them among the best in the league and give this underrated rivalry some juice.
After the top three, a mish-mash of mediocre teams will fill out the middle of the leagues.
At the bottom of the league, a bevy of teams missing their superstars will call the basement home. Central Florida without Jermaine Taylor, UAB without Robert Vaden and Paul Delaney, Memphis without Antonio Anderson, Robert Dozier, Shawn Taggart, and Tyreke Evans, and Southern Mississippi without Jeremy Wise will be seriously hurting in 2010.
Team by team capsules, projections, and all-league teams after the jump.
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