Birmingham, Ala. – March 13, 2026 – Two victories.
That's what the USF men's basketball team needs to clinch an automatic bid to the program's fourth appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
USF's weekend quest begins Saturday afternoon when the No. 1-seeded Bulls (23-8) face the No. 5-seeded Charlotte 49ers (17-16) in the American Conference Tournament semifinals at Legacy Arena. Charlotte defeated No. 4-seeded and home-standing UAB 83-78 in Friday's quarterfinals.
USF beat Charlotte 83-60 in last Sunday's regular-season finale at the Yuengling Center, getting 22 points from
Joseph Pinion and 20 from
Wes Enis. It was the only USF-Charlotte meeting this season.
"We played Charlotte just the other day (last Sunday), so it's still very fresh, and that (scouting report) is very familiar to us,'' Bulls head coach
Bryan Hodgson said.
By winning the American Conference regular-season title and clinching the No. 1 seed, USF received a double-bye into the league tournament semifinals, so only two wins are needed for the NCAA bid.
It might sound easy. It is not.
USF has participated in 44 previous conference tournaments. It has won two games on only three occasions — 1983, 1990 (when USF captured the Sun Belt Conference Tournament championship), and 2005.
"We don't have to flip a switch,'' Hodgson said. "We play every game the same way. We play it to win. There's no extra pressure. We're not going to play differently. We're not going to prepare differently. I think that's the biggest mistake some people make. There's nothing different about Saturday.
"We're going to play a team that we played twice already in our conference. We're going to really spend time looking at the things we did well against those teams, fix the things that we didn't do well, and attack that game one possession at a time, one four-minute war at a time. That's how you win in March. The people who put too much emphasis on, 'Man, it's postseason, you know, winner go home.' No, that just makes the guys tight. This team hasn't lost a game in a long time because we take it one game at a time.''
USF enters with a nine-game winning streak — third all-time in program history — and hasn't been defeated since Jan. 31 (a 79-78 overtime defeat at Temple).
Meanwhile, Charlotte has seemingly overachieved after being picked for 13th (last) in the American Conference preseason poll. The 49ers, who will be playing their third game in three days while facing a fresh Bulls team, has senior point guard Dezayne Mingo (fourth in American assists at 4.7 per game, plus 12.0-point average, career-high 35 points against UAB) and 7-foot-2, 270-pound center Anton Bonke (10.6 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.6 blocks per game).
The 49ers dropped seven of their last nine regular-season games before winning consecutive tournament games against Tulane and UAB.
USF has a pair of American Conference first-team performers in
Izaiyah Nelson and Enis.
Nelson (15.8 points per game, 9.8 rebounds) was also named the league's Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, and Top Newcomer. Enis averages a team-high 16.5 points, while adding 3.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists. Enis and Pinion (a third-team American pick) each have exactly 100 makes from 3-point range, making them just the 12th NCAA Division I tandem to accomplish that since the 3-pointer was added for the 1986-87 season.
If USF defeats Charlotte and the seeds hold, it would face the No. 2-seeded Wichita State Shockers (21-10), the American's other team to earn a double-bye, in Sunday's championship game.
Winning two games makes it simple. Falling short of that, could USF still qualify for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid? Hodgson said he believes the Bulls already have achieved enough for that consideration, but he doesn't plan on extolling USF's virtues for public consumption.
"I'm not going to sit here and go through the metrics because we can sit up here all day and say what makes sense to us, and it's not going to make sense to someone else,'' Hodgson said. "I think if we're fortunate enough to be in the (NCAA) tournament, I think people will see that we belong there.
"I firmly believe that if we put our resume up against some of the other teams being talked about, we would compare well. There are teams in the Power Four conferences that have horrible Quad One records. It's great that they played eight Quad One games, but they're 1-7. So what are we talking about? At the end of the day, I do believe we belong, but that decision is not up to us. We're very big on controlling what we can control. You're not going to hear some pitch from me this weekend on the NCAA. We're going to control what we can control … and that's winning basketball games.''
The most direct route is simple. Win Saturday, then win Sunday. Then the Bulls are automatically in the 68-team NCAA field. That's the focus.
Tournament Format & Schedule
The 2026 American Conference Men's Basketball Championship features a 10-team, five-day stepladder bracket. As the No. 1 seed, South Florida receives a double-bye directly to Saturday's semifinals at Legacy Arena at the BJCC.
- Semifinals | Saturday, March 14 | 3 p.m. ET | ESPN2
- Championship | Sunday, March 15 | 3:15 p.m. ET | ESPN
Post-game press conferences will be posted to the American Conference's
YouTube.
Tickets:
Men's basketball single-game and season tickets can be purchased by calling 1-800-Go-Bulls or by visiting USFBullsTix.com.
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About USF Men's Basketball
South Florida men's basketball named Bryan Hodgson, 37, as the program's 12th head coach on March 24, 2025. Hodgson came to Tampa from Arkansas State, where he led the program to back-to-back 20-win seasons and its first postseason appearance since 1999 in his two seasons at the helm.
The program, amidst its 55th season in 2025-26, captured its second regular season American Conference Championship in program history this season, finishing 23-8. Embarking on its 14th postseason appearance, South Florida has a chance for its fourth NCAA Tournament appearance. The Bulls have also made nine NITs and a CBI championship in 2019. Three former Bulls – Chucky Atkins, Charlie Bradley, and Rodenko Dobras – have had their jerseys retired and are members of the USF Athletic Hall of Fame. The Bulls play their home games at the 10,400-seat Yuengling Center on the USF Tampa campus.
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