A-10 Basketball: VCU on top, La Salle a team to watch in March

VCU is the team to beat

Throughout the first half of conference play, it was impossible to determine who the best team in the A10 was. There seemed to be a steady top-tier consisting of Dayton, Saint Louis, Davidson, and VCU, but it was a constantly rotating cycle as far as which one was the frontrunner. Just when one team would start to separate themselves from the pack, they’d inevitably lose their next game as a different contender bullied their way to a decisive victory.

Fast forward to where we are today, and the picture at the top has become a bit (albeit not a lot) more clear. Saint Louis has lost five out of their last seven contests and George Mason recently loss two straight and almost three of their last four were it not for an overtime victory over UMass on Wednesday. Dayton has consistently hung around near the top, but they can’t be considered the team to beat when they’re yet to beat another top-four squad. That leaves us with Davidson Wildcats and VCU Rams – both 9-2 in conference – as the final two candidates for current favorite to cut down the nets.

Of course, everything is still extremely subject to change over these final six/seven games, but for now, at least, the Rams have to be given the edge over the Wildcats. The latter has better individual players, but the former is thirty spots ahead on Kenpom.com (46 and 76), and according to that same site, they have the 5th best defense in the entire nation.

One might make the counter-argument that the Wildcats won when the two teams squared off in January, but it should be noted that Davidson had home court advantage in that game, and beyond that, the Rams have been the significantly hotter team since that point. Over the succeeding eight games, Davidson is 6-2 with losses to struggling teams like Saint Joe’s and UMass while VCU is 7-1 with their only loss coming against Rhode Island. On that same note, while Davidson has let teams hang around in most of their victories, VCU has been absolutely steamrolling their opponents lately (average margin of 16.6 points over their last five contests).

As noted above, even if the Rams should be considered the current A10 favorite, the race should be extremely tight heading down the stretch, and it’s not difficult to see any one of VCU, Davidson, George Mason, or Dayton winding up at the top. Both the Rams and the Wildcats will have a date with the Flyers in this upcoming week, so we will inevitably have more factors to consider in this discussion before long.