The 2021 calendar year is down to its last hours.
Tomorrow, hopefully, South Florida plays its first American Athletic Conference game of the season against East Carolina at the Yuengling Center. Our game preview will be published later today, but before we get to that here is our take on the five biggest USF basketball stories of 2021.
For the first time, we are including the women’s basketball program to this year-end look.
Number five: Fans return to games
After a season of empty arenas, covid pauses (some as long as a month), a one-city NCAA tournament college basketball returned in November – and so did the fans, pep bands, cheerleaders and dance squads. There was ‘juice’ in the arena again.
I didn’t realize how much I missed that atmosphere. Even with the sparse crowds that attend USF men’s basketball games.
The coronavirus pandemic is not over. Earlier this month college basketball and football programs across the nation began reporting positive cases. Games have been postponed/canceled/forfeited. Like Yogi Berra once said ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again.’
Number four: Mass exodus of MBB players
It began with freshman Luke Anderson in February.
Then, three days after the Bulls’ season ended with a 68-67 loss to Wichita State in the second round of the AAC tournament, USF players started entering the NCAA Transfer Portal. Eight in all. Was it the enactment of the one-time transfer rule by the NCAA that allows athletes in all sports to transfer once without sitting a season? Was it the additional season of eligibility? The so-called ‘covid year’? Was it something that happened behind the scenes? Or maybe a combination of multiple factors. USF fans soon found out and it was ‘troubling.’
More on that to come.
Number three: The WBB team wins the AAC championship
On March 11, No. 20 ranked South Florida defeated UCF 64-54 and won its first American Athletic Conference Tournament championship in program history. This historic achievement came nine days after USF beat UCF 65-62 at the Yuengling Center for its first AAC regular-season title.
Number two: Jose Fernandez gets win No. 400
It was just another December buy game victory over an inferior non-conference opponent at the Yuengling Center for the Bulls right? NOPE! When then No. 16 USF defeated High Point 62-46 Jose Fernandez got his 400th career win as the head coach of the USF women’s basketball program.
Fernandez — who was, in November of 2000, elevated from recruiting coordinator to head coach after just months at USF — took over a moribund program that hadn’t finished better than one game over .500 since moving to Division I in 1982. After going 4-24 in his first season, Fernandez has helped the Bulls to seven NCAA Tournament bids, 16 postseason appearances in the last 17 years, and nine 20-victory seasons.
Number one: The independent review of the men’s basketball program
In early/mid-March there was chatter on Twitter about an incident at an AAC basketball program that involved a coach and players that included a racial component.
Attention initially focused on Cincinnati. The Bearcats head coach subsequently exited the program.
Early in the afternoon of Mar. 18, USF issued a press release that read, in part:
“We are aware of troubling concerns that have been reported involving a member of our men’s basketball coaching staff. We take these matters very seriously. An independent review is ongoing and the involved staff member has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of that review.”
Three months later USF issued another press release announcing that the independent review of the USF men’s basketball program was complete and “concluded that Associate Head Coach Tom Herrion committed misconduct in violation of university policy stemming from inappropriate comments made to student-athletes.
Following the review, USF Vice President of Athletics Michael Kelly has decided not to renew Herrion’s contract and Herrion is no longer with the program.”
According to Kelly, the review’s findings were that head coach Brian Gregory and the administration “are, and have been, operating in accordance with the University of South Florida’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, and that our processes for ensuring those commitments are upheld.”
With the cloud of the independent review lifted and coach Herrion no longer a part of the program, preparation began for the 2021-22 season.
So, here we are, mere hours away from 2022 and the college basketball landscape is once again being negatively affected by COVID-19.
Since the season began Nov. 9, more than 190 men's Division I basketball games and more than 160 women's D-I games have been canceled or postponed due to COVID-19. The majority came after mid-December, with several stretching into the new year. Hopefully, the game between USF and ECU is played as scheduled on New Year’s Day.
