USF Men's Basketball Pre-Season Report 2023-2024, Part 3
The Foam Dome will have plenty of new players and new expectations this upcoming season in this multi part series looking at both the men's and women's program extensively before the season tips off
The American Athletic Conference announced their preseason coaches poll and honorees leading into the 2023-2024 collegiate basketball season. For USF men’s and women’s basketball, the addition of six new teams in UAB, FAU, North Texas, UTSA, Charlotte, and Rice coming into the fold replacing the departing UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati means there’s plenty of room for parity within the AAC.
In the previous segments of this series, we looked at the new USF men’s basketball staff, and the current roster breakdown. In part three for men’s basketball we will look at the schedule, both in conference and out of conference, and where the AAC coaches have the Bulls slated for the 2023-24 season:
USF Men’s Basketball: Bulls on Parade Schedule
Schedule, at a Glance
USF men’s basketball will tip off their season on November 2nd in an exhibition match against Edward Waters. From there and over the next month, the Bulls will host four teams: South Carolina State, Central Michigan, Northern Iowa, and Maine respectively. The team will hit the road traveling to Hofstra and then to UMass before taking part of the Orange Bowl Classic against Florida State at Sunrise Arena in Sunrise, FL in early December.
They’ll host four more teams in December to wrap up non-conference play: Arkansas - Pine Bluff, Loyola - Chicago, Albany, and Alabama State. The 11 teams USF will face in non-conference play are a mixture of big name opponents, NCAA Tournament teams, and more importantly, tune up games to hopefully be able to garner some wins and confidence early in the season.
For conference play in the American Athletic Conference, each team is set to participate in a total of 18 league matches. Conference play starts with a January 4th home game versus the Temple Owls. The Bulls went 0-2 against the Philly-based team last season. This schedule involves facing five out of the 13 conference opponents twice, while the remaining eight teams will be encountered once. Two teams that USF will face only once will be traveling to take on Memphis and hosting Florida Atlantic, the two teams picked in the top two spots in the coaches poll. Additionally, the Bulls will only face SMU, Tulane, and Wichita State once at home, and UAB, ECU, and UNT once on the road. USF will have home and away games against Charlotte, Rice, Temple, UTSA, Tulsa, which are ironically the bottom 5 teams slated in the AAC coaches poll.
Speaking of which…
Coaches Poll, Fair Expectations
With the roster built, staff assembled, and schedule slated, the fellow coaches in the American Athletic Conference voted USF 9th out of 14 teams with 62 points garnered. This puts them well behind Wichita State who was picked 8th and 90 points, and only slightly ahead of Tulsa, who was 10th with 59 points. Additionally, no USF player was listed in any of the all-conference teams.
The full poll is below:
Now that we are caught up to speed with USF men’s basketball ahead of their tip off against Edward Waters, we will begin to look at USF women’s basketball (aka, best team on campus) in a similar breakdown structure for an additional three parts.