Atlantic 10 Basketball: 3 sleeper teams that could contend in 2018-19

Dayton Flyers

You may be starting to notice a theme here. The Flyers, just like VCU and Duquesne, will be under the direction of a second-year coach who struggled somewhat in his debut season at the helm. On the positive side, and also like those other teams, the Flyers have a lot of their best players coming back.

I’m sure they’d love to have Darrell Davis, the senior guard who averaged 15.4 points per game, for another season, but there will still be four players that averaged >8 points per game on the roster. Big man Josh Cunningham is a near lock for first team all-A10, and point guard Jalen Crutcher, who made the conference’s all-rookie squad last season, is poised to break out as a star.

Not only that, but Dayton also has some of the best incoming freshman talent in the conference with Obi Toppin (redshirt), Dwayne Cohill (#137 freshman nationally according to 247Sports), and 3-star 6’8″ forward Frankie Policelli. The bottom line is that between all of the aforementioned returners and newcomers, Dayton will be at least 7 deep of solid talent.

For me, it comes to the pros outweighing the cons when comparing this year’s Dayton teams with last year’s. The cons category really only contains the loss of Darrell Davis. A hit, no doubt, but definitely not an insurmountable one.

In terms of the pros with this team, they’ll have more chemistry and experience with Grant, the freshman class is fantastic, and they’ve got some of the deepest returning talent in the conference. Those all sound like ingredients to a more successful season. How much more successful is tough to predict, but the sky is the limit if it all comes together.