Atlantic 10 Basketball: 2020 conference tournament preview and predictions

The Atlantic 10 Basketball Tournament is finally upon us. Consider this your road map for key players, teams to watch, bracketology, and game-by-game predictions.

No one in the preseason could have imagined the landscape of the Atlantic 10 Basketball being what it is as we head into this year’s tournament. Dayton is the best team of the decade, VCU fell down a mineshaft, Davidson is a 7-seed, and Richmond, who’s coach, Chris Mooney, was seeing billboards around the city calling for his job, is on an absolute tear and entering Brooklyn as the second-best team in the field.

As mentioned above, Obi Toppin and the Dayton Flyers are the heavy favorites, but despite the lack of parity at the top, the tournament will still be interesting to watch for a variety of reasons – a couple teams (Richmond, Saint Louis) are still in the mix for auto-bids if the cards fall in their favor.

Also, the middle of the pack of the A10 is littered with teams that could get hot enough for 40 minutes to pull off the massive upset over the Flyers (or at least some fun upsets against each other before having the opportunity).

In this article, I’ll discuss my five (it was hard to choose just five) players to watch, break down the heavyweight contenders and possible dark horses, and, finally, make game-by-game predictions.

Let’s go.