American Athletic Conference
March 10-13. All games at Orlando.
kPOY: Daniel Hamilton, Connecticut.

The American tournament gets underway Thursday with two first-round games at the Amway Center.

There is no way to say this politely, so I apologize to Owls’ fans in advance, but Temple is one of the weakest one-seeds I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this. There are four teams with a better chance to win the American tournament. And that doesn’t include SMU, who would be the favorite here were they allowed to play. But it does include Tulsa and Houston, teams that apparently do not have much of a shot of an at-large bid.

Temple itself may only have the option of getting in via an automatic bid. The teams with the most likely chance at a safety net are the four and five seeds, Cincinnati and Connecticut, respectively. (Actually, UConn is about even with Temple at bracketmatrix.com.) And those two happen to somehow have the best chance of winning despite being matched up in a quarterfinal game. It’s a stretch to say that’s the de-facto title game since the combined chance of title between those two is 45%. However, Temple figures to be an underdog in a presumptive semifinal game against the winner.

                  Qtrs Semis Final Champ
 5 Connecticut     100  50.2  37.1  22.8
 4 Cincinnati      100  49.8  36.6  22.2
 2 Houston         100  82.4  44.7  21.1
 3 Tulsa           100  63.6  35.8  17.3
 1 Temple          100  80.3  24.4  10.1
 6 Memphis         100  36.4  15.7   5.5
 7 UCF            65.1  13.3   3.2   0.6
 8 East Carolina  55.9  11.9   1.2   0.2
 9 South Florida  44.1   7.8   0.7   0.09
10 Tulane         34.9   4.3   0.6   0.06

American tourney records

SMU           3-1
UConn         5-2
East Carolina 1-1
Houston       2-2
Tulsa         1-1
Cincinnati    1-2
Temple        1-2
UCF           1-2
South Florida 0-2
Memphis       0-2
Tulane        0-1