Air Force Basketball

As an AF grad I try to follow AF sports. Obviously Football is easiest to follow but I've always been a big basketball fan. Nothing like going into a warm gym on a cold winter's night to watch a game. Although Football is America's sport, I believe that College Basketball is our unrequited love (Baseball is our conscious)! Anyway before the 2003 - 2004 season there really wasn't any reason to follow AF basketball. They were an average team capable of beating the nobodies (assuming we weren't a nobody!) but getting spanked in conference play (see below for winning percentage of overall, grey boxes and conference play, blue boxes).

Even before conference play in 1980 we were a .500 team at best. Two early tournament invites (1960 and 1962) and then nothing. About the only claim to fame is that Gregg Popovich was team Captain back in late 60s. One other blip was two WAC tournament wins during the 89 - 90 season. Overall AF is 602 - 751 (including this year). They have had 52 seasons so the average record is 12 - 14 with a .445 winning percentage. As mentioned pretty average. Conference record has been abysmal at 113 - 313 averaging 4 - 11 record and a winning percentage of .265. Of course this includes the last 5 years when AF went 98 - 39 (conference 43 - 17)!!!! Take these wins out and we had a conference record of 70 - 296....ughhh....wonder why no one watched AF basketball. Obviously in 2003 all this changed. A new attitude (a winning attitude) and a new offensive (Princeton) and AF basketball landed on the map. Unfortunately our two NCAA appearances were against prominent teams like N Carolina and Illinois. We played good in the first half but the talent came through in the second halves. Last year we did make to the NIT Final Four losing a heart breaker to Clemson. The amazing thing is that over this 5 year period we have had 4 coaches! When did AF become the test bed for new hot coaches? Scott and his crony Mooney were expected (funny how Scott couldn't succeed at Princeton and is now back in Colorado at DU) and then of course the traitor who left for more money and Colorado...a real disappointment...I really thought his home was AF but I guess you can't take egos out of coaches. Anyway AF is 8 - 4 going into conference play this year. Hopefully they can be respectable and continue what was started 5 years ago.