Conference USA Basketball Weekly Review

Scores

Tuesday, January 3

Florida 79, UAB 61

Ole Miss 50, SMU 48

Wednesday, January 4

UCF 60, Tulane 53

Memphis 69, Tennessee 51

Houston 70, Tulsa 69 (OT)

Marshall 76, UTEP 60

Southern Mississippi 78, East Carolina 76

TCU 78, Rice 74

Saturday, January 7

Memphis 62, UAB 59

UTEP 70, Houston 50

Southern Mississippi 71, Tulane 66 (OT)

UCF 81, East Carolina 63

SMU 57, Tulsa 55

Marshall 63, Rice 61

This past week, Conference USA lost a giant, and it's that story which overshadowed most of the week while magnifying one of the league's more noticeable rivalries.

Gene Bartow, a man who coached at one Conference USA program and built another basically from scratch, died at the age of 81 on January 3 due to cancer. Bartow coached Memphis back when the program was known as Memphis State and was not affiliated with Conference USA, a league which had naturally not existed at that point. Bartow did coach, however, in the region of the country that bears C-USA's natural geographic footprint. Even though he didn't ply his trade as a coach when Conference USA hit the national spotlight, he can be seen in many ways as one of the fathers of this basketball-centric league.

One would do well to remember that Louisville and Cincinnati used to be part of Conference USA. This league used to own a basketball brand name that carried some degree of national heft and visibility. Such a fact can be traced back in part to Bartow, who led Memphis State to the 1973 NCAA championship game (when the Tigers lost to UCLA and Bill Walton in St. Louis) and later built the Alabama-Birmingham program from the ground up, leading the Blazers deep into a few NCAA Tournaments but never making the Final Four. In between those stops, Bartow took over for John Wooden at UCLA after the Wizard of Westwood retired in 1975. Bartow didn't last long in Los Angeles, but he did take the Bruins to the 1976 Final Four, proving that he could do something with the talent Wooden gave him. Bartow also coached Valparaiso to the Division II NCAA Tournament in the 1960s, before Valpo became a Division I school.

The legacy left behind by Bartow - whose stewardship of the UAB program made him a father figure in the city of Birmingham, Alabama - magnified the importance of this past Saturday's game between Memphis and UAB. Memphis shares a claim to the Bartow name and imprint, but this game was especially important for UAB, the program Bartow basically birthed into existence. Memphis has consistently been able to outfox UAB, but the Blazers hoped to turn the tide on their home floor this time around, with the memory of Bartow hanging thickly in the building. However, Memphis was still able to play enough defense to outlast the Blazers, giving UAB coach Mike Davis yet another dispiriting setback in his tenure as one of Bartows' successors. UAB missed an opportunity to register a season-defining win that would have resonated in the public memory for reasons that transcended the NCAA Tournament.

In other league news, Southern Mississippi, Marshall, and Central Florida each won two games.