Based on what? The five teams that have losing records right now? As opposed to the nine that don’t?

I wouldn’t sound the alarms. Even in years we thought the conference was going to be pretty down, it ended up with three bids. As opposed to the MAC, which will simply never get more than one barring something amazing happening.

George Mason has been a disappointment. 0-3 is bad for a team some picked to win the league.

The game Saturday is important for us. If we want to reach our goals, let alone exceed them, we need to win all our buy games.

Last edited by duq81 (11/13/2018 9:55 pm)

Based on the fact that George Mason has three bad losses ( one of the supposedly top teams ) UMASS loses at home, GW, St Bonnie's, Fordham, Lasalle and Richmond are struggling big time against some bad teams. St Joes has one senior in their top seven. Davidson has no seniors in their top six. St Louis, VCU, Rhode Island, Dayton and Us are very young as well. Anything can happen to young teams and once we get into conference and beat each other up, that will not help. By the way this is a discussion board just some thought provoking ideas. I would say the next two or three years there are going to be some outstanding teams, as long as teams do not get decimated by transfers.

Way too early. A10 teams always go on runs in OOC and end up beating some top teams. The Dukes might even be one of those teams.

no it's been pretty bad for a few teams, but who didn't expect fordham and GW to be dumpster fires? richmond had the same brutal home losses to begin the year last year as well. george mason has been extremely disappointing sure, even SLU and Davidson are undefeated but have questionable wins already.

on the other hand VCU and Dayton have won all their games and they're *not* supposed to contend for the title. St. Joe's is 3-0 and they've looked real good doing it. and then of course, there is us.

don't panic, the sky isn't falling

Last year wasn't such a great year for the A10 either. Only three teams hit the 20-win mark and only two other teams in the conference had overall records that were over .500. Injury-depleted St. Joe's ended up in 4th place with just a 10-8 conference record and 16-16 overall mark. Yet a very mediocre A10 still got its top 3 teams (Rhode Island, St. Bonaventure, Davidson) into the NCAA tourney.

Davidson needed to win the conference tourney to get in and did. They were just 5-6 in non-conference play, including double-digit losses to Nevada, Appalachian State, North Carolina and Virginia, plus losses to New Mexico State and Hawaii. Then they went 13-5 in conference play and beat St. Louis, St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island in succession to win the conference tourney, before a 5-point loss to Kentucky in the first round of the NCAAs.

Rhode Island lost to Nevada, Virginia and Alabama in non-conference play and won close games against Charleston and Iona. But they went 15-3 in the A10 to win the regular season championship and earn at at-large NCAA bid where they beat Oklahoma but got crushed by Duke in the tourney.

St. Bonaventure opened last year with a loss to Niagara and nearly lost to Vermont, but also beat Syracuse and Maryland in non-conference play. Then the Bonnies started 2-4 in A10 play and needed to go on a 13-game winning streak, before losing to Davidson in the conference tourney semis, to secure an at-large bid. They beat UCLA in the play-in round before losing to Florida.

So your concerns about the A10 not being a three-bid league this year are well-founded. The conference is coming off a very mediocre, top-heavy year and its best teams last year lost a lot to graduation, and in Rhode Island's case, one of the league's best coaches. But there's still a lot of basketball to be played, a lot to be learned about these teams, before anyone should write it off as a 1-bid league.

St. Louis may not have looked that impressive in beating SE Missouri, Troy and North Alabama, but that's their game: low-scoring games that aren't blowouts. Davidson has the Grady and Gudmundsson show, I wouldn't write them off after a near-hiccup against Dartmouth the other night. VCU's looked pretty solid so far, Dayton seems poised for a rebound after an off year, St. Joe's is healthy again with Brown and Kimble back. And your Duquesne Dukes have their deepest roster in more than a decade.

 

Here is a piece I just finished on the current state of the A-10 as it relates to the postseason. You can put me pretty firmly in Wildwoods' camp. There are definitely some considerable red flags even if their is time to recover from them. 

For those of you who weren’t aware, Face and I recently restarted WeWearTheRing. I’m very proud of The Point of Pittsburgh, but the space didn’t really allow for my Duquesne content and with the excitement Keith Dambrot has brought back. I don’t plan to regularly post links here, only when what I’m writing is relevant to an existing thread as is the case here. That said, we would greatly appreciate it if you bookmarked the page or followed us on social media. My apologies if the second half of this post derails the original topic. If you’d like to talk WWTR, please private message me here. 

We may be getting a preview from the Hawks.
St Joes beat Wake Forest by 20 today on a neutral court @ the Myrtle Beach Invitation.   

Conway SC is a 2-3 hr drive from Winston-Salem but doubt the Deac’s fans traveled in any kind of numbers.

duq81 wrote:

Next year should be a very different story. Among Duquesne, VCU, St. Joe's, UMass, Davidson, URI, Richmond, and Dayton, there are very few seniors that are key parts of those teams. Not great for this year, but those are likely to all be very strong teams a year from now. So while we may be a two bid league this season, 4-5 bids will be on the table a year from now.

that's assuming, hopefully, that transfers do not decimate rosters

 

In a down year...  2 bids.  I expect more next year.