A-10 Basketball: 2019-20 tiered preseason power rankings

Richmond Spiders

Richmond is being pegged by many as a possible dark-horse candidate to steal the league title away from the consensus heavyweights. The rationale is for that is clear – they have two top ten players in the league in Jacob Gilyard and Grant Golden, and the rest of the rotation is experienced and offensively versatile. Blake Francis averaged over seventeen points per game as a Wagner Seahawk, Nick Sherod (12.7 points per game) should be fully recovered from the injury that sidelined him after just six games last season, and Nathan Cayo and Jake Wojcik were both impressive as underclassmen.

The problem with the Spiders, or rather, why I believe they’ll be merely solid as opposed to excellent, is their inability to defend and rebound. They allowed the second most points per game in the conference last season and had the least total rebounds. There’s no question that they’ll be able to score the ball, but so too will their opponents, and while Chris Mooney may not be as bad of a tactician as some suggest, he certainly hasn’t proven himself spectacular at winning the close ones. The bottom line here is that Richmond’s talent will allow them to be better than average in a tough A10, but unless they drastically improve their defensive tenacity and physicality down-low, they won’t have what it takes to compete with the more well-rounded and equally talented teams above them.

George Mason Patriots

Mason may just be the hardest team in the conference to project. On one hand, they lost Otis Livingston and will start off the year dealing with key injuries to Justin Kier and Ian Boyd, but on the other, they finished 11-7 last season and will be returning the vast majority of their production. Hopefully, Kier’s injury doesn’t linger – he’ll be the clear leader as a Senior who averaged 14.5 points and 6.5 rebounds last season, but Javon Greene (Junior) and Jordan Miller (Sophomore) could also emerge as bona fide stars themselves. The talent level dips a bit after those three, but the depth is still solid and the roster as a whole will be one of the more experienced ones in the league.

The Patriots don’t excel in any one area, but they aren’t seriously lacking in any either. I see them as a team that will give the great teams a scare every now and then, lose a few games that they shouldn’t, and end up around or a little bit better than .500 when league play is said and done. The ceiling here isn’t extremely high, but, conversely, the floor seems safe as well. Their A10 schedule includes an extremely tough five-game stretch in February – at Davidson, vs. Rhode Island, at UMass, at Saint Bonaventure, and at VCU – but if they can make it through that with their confidence and health in tact, they should be able to stay safely away from the bottom four.

Saint Louis Billikens

The Billikens will undoubtedly have an heir of confidence about them heading into this season after cutting down the nets in March, but their offseason losses have made becoming a contender again an extremely tall order. Jordan Goodwin and Hasahn French will both be back and in the mix to end up on one all-conference team or another, but outside of them, Fred Thatch and a couple of others, the rotation will be filled with Freshmen and transfers. It’s not that those Freshmen and transfers are bad – in fact, they have serious potential – but they can’t be expected to step right in and replace the scoring production and defensive tenacity that Tremain Isabell, Javon Bess, D.J. Foreman and Dion Wiley provided.

I expect the Billikens to remain competitive and to stay out of playing the Wednesday game in Brooklyn, but it’s tough to see them doing much more than with so many new variables in a much more competitive league than the one they won last season. To make a run in the conference tourney again, they’ll need to gain momentum with some hard-fought wins at the end of the regular season – four of their last five games are vs. VCU, at George Mason, at Rhode Island, and vs. Saint Bonaventure.

Massachusetts Minutemen

UMass is another wildcard team that’s tough to project in terms of the final standings. They lost the vast majority of their production from last season after three assistant coaches were fired, but they also reeled in the conference’s second-best Freshman class and seem to be in a much healthier place as far as the locker room and overall culture go. Three-point sniper Carl Pierre is the clear-cut leader and best-returning player on the roster, and top-100 Freshman big Tre Mitchell (81 according to 247Sports) should make an immediate impact and is an early favorite for A10 Rookie of the Year.

The rest of the roster will include six other Freshmen, three Sophomores, and just one Junior and Senior apiece, so there will undoubtedly be some growing pains early in the season. It’s worth noting, however, that all seven Freshmen have a year of post-graduate play under their belts, so the jump to the A10 level won’t be quite as much of a shock as might have otherwise been.

This team should be fun to watch and an overall much-improved product compared to the one that took the floor last season, but they are still likely a year or two away from being a significant problem for the teams at the top. Look for Sy Chatman to make an enormous leap in his Sophomore campaign and for the team to get significantly better as the season progresses, but it’s probably safe to keep the Minutemen out of the Saturday or Sunday games on your A10 Tournament brackets for now.