American Stories – Iron Sharpens Iron as American Place Three in NCAA Championship

ORLANDO, Fla. — The NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee finally showed some respect to the American Athletic Conference, giving the three teams its selected — Cincinnati, Wichita State and Houston — accurate seeds and decent draws for the upcoming national tournament.

Cincinnati (30-4) received the No. 2 seed in the South and will play No. 15-seeded Georgia State in the first round of a sub-regional bracket Friday at 2 p.m. ET on TBS in Nashville in a pod that will also include No. 7 Nevada and 11 Texas.

Wichita State (25-7) will be the No.  4 in the East and open against No. 13-seeded Marshall, the Conference USA champion, at 1:30 p.m. ET on TNT Friday in San Diego, with No. 5 West Virginia and No. 11 Murray State in the same pod.

Houston (26-7) will be the No. 6 in the East and open against No. 11 San Diego State, the Mountain West champion, Thursday at 7:20 p.m. ET on TBS in Wichita, Kansas, with Montana and Michigan in the same pod.

The highest seeded American team prior to this season was former league member Louisville, which won the league and was rewarded with a No. 4 in the same year as UConn, which was a No. 7, but won the NCAA tournament championship.

Cincinnati earned its bid as an automatic qualifier, capping a second consecutive 30-win season with a 56-55 victory over Houston in what only be described as a rock fight in the final of the Aaron’s American Athletic Conference tournament Sunday.

It wasn’t pretty.

Cincinnati shot 6-for-18 in the second half (33 percent) and Houston shot  6-for-30 (20 percent). But it was dramatic as Bearcats forward Kyle Washington made a contested 3 to tie the game at 55-55 with 58 seconds to play and then Cincinnati’s 6-8 senior forward Gary Clark — the conference Player of the Year — made one of two free throws with four seconds to play for the gamewinner.

“It was a bloodletting,’’ Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Sometimes in a rock fight you throw at each other and you hit nothing. We’re hitting each other in the face with rocks, and kids were battling each other.’’

That has been the gritty personality of The American in big games among its top three teams and the reason all three are ranked in the AP top 25.

“The teams know each other so well that the game in the second half just kind of screeches to a grinding halt,’’ Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said. “I kept telling my team the game was going to be won when the ball is in the air, obviously meaning a rebound, or when the ball is on the ground. Nobody was going to make a whole lot of shots. Devin Davis made a jumper later for them. And Kyle made that huge three late, other than that it was layups and free throws. I think a lot of that has to do with the physicality of the game, the familiarity of the teams and then both teams are just beat up from beating each other up. ‘’

It sounds like the old Big East.

The biggest challenge for this relatively new league will be to get its teams into the second weekend. That hasn’t happened since 2014 when UConn and Louisville both advanced to the Sweet 16.

No one said the games would be easy. But none the teams should be overwhelmed.

The American is favored in all three first round games by Ken Pom.com and potential second-round matchups between Cincinnati-Nevada, Houston-Michigan and Wichita State-West Virginia promise to be intriguing because of the Shockers’ innovative offense, the Cougars’ perimeter shooting and the Bearcats’ rugged team defense.

Cincinnati, which struggled with its shooting against Houston because Jacob Evans III jammed his finger and Washington was playing with a small finger injury, will have five days to get its key players healthy for its opener against Georgia Tech as opposed to playing three games in three days.

“We need to get the adrenalin out of our system and get re-focused,’’ Cronin said. “After we won the regular season, I gave the kids two days off.’’

At least this year, Cincinnati will not have to travel as far, compared with previous NCAA appearances. Nashville is only four hours away from Cincinnati’s campus. “The last three years, we’ve had to play 2,000 miles away — twice in Spokane and once in Sacramento,’’ Cronin said. “The last time we played in Nashville, we advanced to the Sweet 16.’’

All three coaches have been here before and had success. Sampson coached Oklahoma to an NCAA Final Four in 2002. Gregg Marshall coached Wichita State to a Final Four in 2013.

None of them shy away from the spotlight.