Sampson Will Win AAC COY, But Cronin, Haith, and Tubby Have All Done Great Jobs
The Houston Cougars will finish the season ranked inside the top 25 for the first time in years and will be going dancing for just the second time since 1992. Their coach Kelvin Sampson will probably end up being AAC coach of the year, and deservedly so, but some other guys have done a heck of a job as well.
Frank Haith - Tulsa was picked 8th in the coaches poll this year and found their way up to a 4th place finish in the league and a first round bye in the conference tournament. Things could have gone way south for them once they lost to Lamar at home the first game of the year. They then lost to Illinois State not once, but twice. This season had no expectations for Tulsa, they could have easily given in, but instead they came out like they wanted to play, and usually that is because of the coach. After losing to Illinois State for a second time, Tulsa followed it up by going to Kansas State and beating the Wildcats, showing that this season wasn't lost yet.
Haith had virtually the same team as he did last year except he graduated the AAC's best three point shooter in Pat Birt and was able to improve them immensely. Last year's team went 15-17 overall and 8-10 in league play, however of the 8 wins they had in conference, just one of them was against a team with a winning record in league play. Last year, Tulsa won just three road games last year, this year they won 7 playing a significantly harder schedule. Projections had Tulsa winning just under 8 conference games this year and they won 12. Frank Haith did an amazing job with the players he had this year. Corey Henderson and Junior Etou improved greatly their senior and unfortunately for Tulsa, their top two leading scorers will both be graduating.
With the expectations, I think Haith did a great job. Nobody predicted Tulsa to have a bye the first round of the tournament and win 12 league games.
Mick Cronin - Cronin won't get very many votes to be COY in the conference because they were projected to win the conference, but the Bearcats completely dominated their competition. If you take away Houston and Wichita State, UC won every game in the conference by double digits except for Tulsa (won by 8) and Temple. Unfortunately, Cronin's coaching job will go unnoticed because of the preseason expectations.
Tubby Smith - With the amount of criticism Tubby gets, you would think Memphis would be on USF or ECU levels of bad, but the reality is the Tigers are one the hottest teams in the conference. Despite being picked to finish 9th in the preseason poll, Memphis fought their way too a 5th place finish in the AAC and they are one win away from a 20 win season. Memphis was also the only team to beat Houston in the month of February, something Wichita or Cincinnati could not do. Memphis is going to improve on Tubby's first year in which they went 19-13 and lost both the Lawson brothers and a couple other key players. It was truly a great job to get this team to 20 wins.
Ultimately, Memphis needed to be more consistent this year (losses to ECU and USF), but if Tubby can get some recruits in we now how well he can coach.
American Conference COY will be announced on Wednesday morning. I predict Kelvin Sampson to get a majority of the votes and then Cronin to get 1-2 votes and Frank Haith may get a vote as well, but Sampson will win COY.
