Like everything else, college basketball has its different classes of conference.

There are the blue bloods — the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East, for example. There are the middle-class members — the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley Conference come to mind.

Then there are the "new" bloods, those conferences that do not have the royal pedigree of the ACC or the Big East but have recently acquired enough basketball talent and respect to warrant those country club invitations and photos with the mayor's wife.

Conference USA is one of the "new" bloods. Although C-USA has only been in existence for 10 years, the men's basketball teams have made enough appearances — and noise — in the NCAA tournament to garner a prominent spot in the national basketball discussion.

Placing a high of six teams — DePaul, Memphis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Charlotte and Alabama-Birmingham — in the 2004 NCAA tournament, the conference sent an average of about four teams per year to the Big Dance.

The teams have had some success in the tournament, as well. Just this year, Louisville advanced to the Final Four before bowing out to Illinois.

"Overall, I thought the competition was at the highest level in college basketball," said Brian Wardle, director of operations for men's basketball at Marquette. Wardle also played on the team from 1997-2001, finishing as the school's third all-time leading scorer with 1,690 points.

"I always thought highly of Conference USA," he said. "It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it."

Wardle said that the conference was always respected, but has really come on strong nationally as the traditionally weaker teams — such as East Carolina — have improved.

"I think it was respected when I played, because Cincinnati was number one almost every other year, so I think they respected the top two or three teams," Wardle said. "The bottom echelon, I don't know if people really respected as much. I think that's where it really grew. Five, six teams got better and better every year, and they made the league just so much more competitive, and it just kept growing from there on out."

Junior guard Joe Chapman said that the level of competition was a key part of what attracted him to Marquette.

"That's what made coming to Marquette special, because the competition was just top to none," Chapman said. "Everyone had superstars on their team, which made our conference real special. Everyone competed from bottom to top, which made it real special, too.

"I was intimidated by it, because I watched it on TV, seeing Kenyon Martin and all the big guys, and like, 'Wow, it's going to be fun playing against those guys,'" Chapman added.

Cincinnati has been prominent on the national level, making the tournament every year since joining C-USA, winning four C-USA tournament championships and eight regular season championships.

The Bearcats' dominance of the league made Marquette's two championships — a tournament championship in 1996 and a regular season title in 2003 — extra special.

"That was unbelievable," senior forward Todd Townsend said. "For so long, Cincinnati just held the crown, and it was always Marquette's goal since I've been here to take it from them. It was just a great year overall, because they had good players, they still had a good team, we had a really good team; it was definitely a special year for us."

With the exception of an early exit in the conference tournament, 2003 was Marquette's best year in C-USA. The team, led by Dwyane Wade and Robert Jackson, made the Final Four, beating several top-flight, nationally respected programs along the way — including a rout of No. 1 seed Kentucky, 83-69 — before bowing out to Kansas in the national semifinal.

Marquette will be entering the Big East next year, along with Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul and South Florida, joining one of the pedigreed blue blood conferences.

Chapman, though does not think the transition will be very tough for the five teams because of their time in C-USA.

"It's going to help us a lot," he said. "It's going to help every team out there."

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on May 2 2005.