The American Conference was in the news this last week. They launched a beta version of their new website complete with a logo. And Commissioner Mike Aresco sat down for a Q & A with Matt Norlander of CBS Sports.com. The best part might have been Aresco’s admission that losing the Big East brand might not be a bad situation for football.

In terms of expectations for next year, pretty much every preview I have read has said the same thing: Louisville, Connecticut, Memphis, Cincinnati, and Temple will be good enough to make the league relevant.

From a historical perspective, that’s correct. Those are the five teams with the most NCAA tournament appearances and most basketball success. But I don’t think people have looked hard enough at Temple’s roster or considered who the Owls have coming back next year. Temple’s streak of six straight NCAA appearances is very much in doubt. More in a moment, but first, here are my lineup-based model’s projections for the American Conference:

For an explanation of the column headings, click here.

Louisville: We all agree Louisville is a Final Four favorite and national title contender. But here is why I will still be watching the team in November and December.

1) I want to see how Rick Pitino replaces Gorgui Dieng in the middle.

Chane Behanan and Montrezl Harrell will probably be the best offensive post players on the team. But Pitino seemed reluctant to play Behanan at times last year against larger opponents (mainly Syracuse), and while Harrell is taller, he is no 7 footer. For defensive reasons it may be desirable to play either Akoy Agau and Mangok Mathiang in the post. That will probably lead to some growing pains offensively, but their defensive presence may make up for it. Finding the right balance of players should be interesting.

2) I want to see if Russ Smith can do it again.

Russ Smith was the kenpom.com player-of-the-year because of his amazing efficiency last season, but I think there are a lot of reasons to doubt he can repeat that. For starters, players that see big jumps in efficiency typically fall back slightly the next season. And Louisville had two of the bigger jumps in ORtg last year. Luke Hancock went from an ORtg of 114 to 121, and Smith went from an ORtg of 92 to 109. In both cases it was largely due to improved shooting. Whether that improved shooting is sustainable remains to be seen.

It is also possible that Smith might be less efficient, even if he isn’t a worse player. First, teams weren’t necessarily game-planning to stop Smith last summer. You can bet that UConn coach Kevin Ollie is getting out the tape and breaking down Smith’s weaknesses this off-season. For UConn to win a league title, they have to beat Louisville. And that means shutting down Smith.

Second, NBA scouts have made a big deal of the fact that Smith has to play point guard to make it to the NBA. I think this is a little silly. Smith has already proven he can create his own shot and create for other players. His assist rate is already above 20% which would make him the lead PG on a lot of teams. But it will be interesting to see if Smith has the ball more often in next year’s offense, and if he passes more. If he does pass more, will that lead to more turnovers or even better offense?

Certainly, Smith will not have to be the primary ball-handler with Terry Rozier and Chris Jones coming in. But I expect that Smith will want to look more like a PG this year.

Connecticut: Inefficient senior RJ Evans is gone. Enosch Wolf might be gone. But with basically everyone else back, the additions of George Washington transfer Lasan Kromah and borderline Top 100 forward Kentan Facey, everyone agrees Connecticut will be better than last year. The only question is how much better. My model is optimistic, in part because Kevin Ollie did well in his first year. Ollie took over a team decimated by unanticipated transfers and guided them to a winning record in the Big East.

If you think UConn needs a dominant forward to truly be considered a Top 25 squad, then you probably remain among the skeptics. But Shabazz Napier and Ryan Boatright are really the dream college backcourt at this point. They are aggressive, talented, and efficient. And having played together for two seasons, they have great chemistry with one another. With two players like that in the backcourt, UConn should be able to challenge for a league title.

Memphis: At this point Memphis has so much talent in the front-court that the addition of Top 100 center Dominic Woodson barely moved the needle.* Memphis jumped from 25th to 23rd in my model nationally. And there is no question that Memphis has a deeper and more talented lineup than Connecticut. They have talented seniors, a talented graduate transfer from George Washington named David Pellom, and five Top 100 recruits coming in. So why doesn’t my model have them higher? The answer is Josh Pastner. He has had talent before, but usually under-achieved.

Pastner’s team has been in the preseason Top 25 the last three seasons, ranked 19th, 11th, and 17th. But in terms of margin-of-victory, only one of the three years was a success. His teams finished 87th, 8th, and 40th in margin of victory those three years. His teams also never earned better than a 6-seed in those three NCAA tournaments. And his 0-11 record all-time against Top 25 teams is a symptom of those overall struggles. With a different coach, Memphis would likely be second in the projected standings.

*Note: It may seem puzzling why Woodson would de-commit from Baylor due to playing time concerns, but commit to a Memphis front-court where there are already 4 players likely to play a lot of minutes. But Woodson is the only true center joining Memphis’ squad. He has more weight and size than some of the other Memphis post players and will likely be better positioned to play right away. The reason Memphis’ projection doesn’t jump up more is because Woodson is mostly just taking minutes from a similar player.

Cincinnati: While Cincinnati was in most people’s preseason Top 25 rankings last season, I had serious questions. I noted that the front-court was likely to be well below-average. I didn’t get everything right, but I nailed that prediction.

Unfortunately, most of those players are back and Mick Cronin is left to rebuild around them. I particularly feel bad for Cronin’s relationship with Justin Jackson. Jackson has been an offensive liability his entire career. But he has always worked hard and Cronin seems reluctant to bench him. Last year Shaquille Thomas was inefficient too. David Nyarsuk shot a higher percentage, but he basically only shot when he had a wide-open lay-up. And Titus Rubles looked good for awhile, but he ended the season on a horrible streak. Rubles got above 1 point per possession just once in his final 13 games.

And if that isn’t bad enough, the team doesn’t have an obvious choice at PG next year. One of three unranked recruits will likely battle for that job. Sean Kilpatrick is back, but make no mistake, this is going to be an ugly offensive team.

Luckily, Mick Cronin has really found a niche as a strong defensive coach in recent years. Assuming he can keep that up, his team will be on the NCAA bubble. But there is no guarantee that they will make the field.

SMU: Last year SMU finished near the cellar of Conference-USA which is not a good sign. But keep in mind that SMU’s margin-of-victory numbers were better than their final record. They were 316th in “Luck” according to Kenpom.com. One factor that may have prevented them from winning close games is that the team was simply exhausted. SMU gave the fewest minutes to its bench of any D1 team. Larry Brown rode his five starters as much as he possibly could.

The great news is that those five starters are back and the team adds five players that should meaningfully improve the offense. The list includes three D1 transfers (Nic Moore from Illinois St., Markus Kennedy from Villanova, Crandall Head from Illinois), and a Top 10 JUCO player in Yanick Moreira. The team also adds Top 100 freshman Keith Frazier. With that kind of talent coming in and that kind of experience coming back, SMU should improve substantially on offense this season.

UCF: Star Keith Clanton is gone and that is a big loss. But basically everyone else is back, and with so many players returning the offense will probably be even better than last year. Isaah Sykes will be on many people’s preseason all-conference ballots. He has great size for the PG position and he is aggressive and efficient. Tristan Spurlock was a Top 100 recruit out of high school and he should continue to dominate in the paint. And Calvin Newell and Kasey Wilson bring a lot to the table too (Newell more on defense than on offense.) Add JUCO transfer Eugene McCrory and a bunch of rising sophomores, and UCF looks poised for another solid year.

The reason I cannot project them for the upper-echelons of the American Conference are the questions on defense. With so many of the same players coming back who couldn’t stop teams last year, it seems likely the team’s defense will not quite be NCAA tournament caliber.

Temple: I am assuming UMass transfer Jesse Morgan will not get eligible. Eric Angevine had a nice summary of this recently. Basically, it is going to take a lot for Morgan to play basketball this season. Of course if Dez Wells got kicked out of school and managed to land on another team immediately, anything is possible. For now, this projection assumes Morgan won’t play.

Looking at Temple’s rotation from last year, here is who is departing and who is returning.

ORtg, PctPoss, Player

Leaving

116, 20% Jake O'Brien

106, 19% Scootie Randall

104, 19% Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson

122, 9% TJ Dileo

108, 20% Anthony Lee

95, 17% Will Cummings

89, 17% Dalton Pepper

86, 19% Quenton DeCosey

I love Anthony Lee as much as the next guy, but it doesn’t take any advanced math to realize that Temple is losing a bunch of efficient players and returning a bunch of inefficient players. Worse yet, Khalif Wyatt shot so much, opposing defenses were focused on him. If Cummings and Pepper were struggling to score with Wyatt on the floor, how efficient are they going to be when they are asked to take more shots this season?

Temple doesn’t have an instant-impact recruiting class to depend on either. There are no transfers and none of Temple’s incoming recruits are Top 100 recruits. In fact, only one current roster player, Dalton Pepper, was a Top 100 recruit out of high school. That isn’t that unusual for Fran Dunphy. Dunphy has made the tournament six years in a row and never had multiple Top 100 recruits on the roster.

But Dunphy isn’t superhuman. He has usually achieved that success by having a veteran team and relying on returning efficient players who he can develop into stars. That’s why most experts are willing to overlook Temple’s roster uncertainty. Dunphy has surprised us before, and it isn’t a stretch to think he will do it again.

But the difference is that Dunphy has never lost this much production in one year. In his previous seven years at Temple, Dunphy has always welcomed back over 50% of the team’s minutes from the year before. This year he welcomes back just 31% of his team’s minutes. And losing Wyatt means the team returns just 28% of its offensive possessions. And as noted in the table, these are low efficiency players that are returning.

Dunphy might still surprise us. But on paper, this is clearly the worst team in Dunphy’s tenure. Even in the A-10, my model would have pegged them for a disappointing season.

Rutgers: Rutgers hasn’t received any good news in awhile, but the recent additions of transfers Kerwin Okoro and JJ Moore was a huge development. Unlike Morgan, both will be filing for fairly normal family illness immediate eligibility waivers and I’ve assumed both requests are granted.

Moore is an extremely under-rated player.  At Pitt he almost never turned the ball over despite being an aggressive inside scorer. He has shot over 50% every year in his entire career, raised his free throw percentage to 81% last season, and his career ORtgs are 108, 109, and 120. That’s the kind of smart effective player Rutgers has usually been missing on its roster.

Also, despite all the crazy transfers this off-season, Myles Mack did not depart. Mack was easily the most efficient player on the roster last year, and almost certainly the team’s MVP.

Combine Mack, Moore, a pair of JUCO guards, and hope that Kadeem Jack and Wally Judge start living up to their high potential and Rutgers might actually have a starting lineup that can compete with the better teams in the league.

But if anything goes wrong, it is going to be a total disaster. There is no depth. (That is literally true now, but assuming Jordan signs a few players before the end of the summer, they will likely only be 2 star recruits who cannot be expected to contribute as freshmen.) You can’t mention names like Malick Kone or Greg Lewis and expect to win in this league. It just isn’t feasible.

Houston: Let’s just get this out of the way. The model hates Houston’s defense. 269th in the nation is just embarrassing. Worse yet, Houston’s defense has pretty much always been at that level under James Dickey.

Now if this team gets you a little excited, particularly with elite recruit Chicken Knowles finally becoming eligible, I get that. In fact, the model above pegs them as the fourth best offense in the conference.

Lineup-wise, the only weakness is PG, but that is probably a little deceiving. Dickey’s offense doesn’t take many threes, and the pressure to get the ball into the paint contributes to an above average TO rate for any ball-handler. But obviously, if you can get the ball to a front-court of Knowles, TaShawn Thomas, and Danuel House, good things will happen. And that has meant in the rare occasions when off-guards Joseph Young and Jherrod Stiggers do shoot threes, they are usually wide open. Really, I’m excited about this team. They just need to realize you have to play both ends of the court.

USF: One player had an ORtg over 100 last year so Stan Health decided to start from scratch. In a new league where even a bad team will have more chances to win, he is going all in with six freshmen, led by Top 100 recruit John Egbunu. That should pay off someday, just not this year.