Later today Saint Louis University will announce its intent to leave Conference USA and join the Atlantic 10 Conference. A mass exodus of Conference USA began last week, when Louisville, Marquette, DePaul, Cincinnati and South Florida departed for the Big East. Rice, SMU, Marshall, Tulsa and Central Florida replaced those schools. Later in the week, the Atlantic 10 extended the invitation to SLU and the university said it would wait to decide whether or not they’d accept. Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno said the initiation wouldn’t have been extended if they didn’t think SLU would accept. Yesterday, Charlotte, who’s also leaving Conference USA decided to join the Atlantic 10, which actually has twelve teams, will become fourteen when SLU and Charlotte begin play in 2005-2006.
