Atlantic 10 Basketball: Early 2020 offseason storylines and observations

It’s been only a month and a half since the college basketball season abruptly ended, but there’s already plenty to talk about around Atlantic 10 Basketball as the programs start preparing for the 2020-2021 season.

Most of the talk around Atlantic 10 Basketball so far has been centered around Richmond and Saint Louis being early favorites to take home the league hardware next March, but many other programs have provided us with interesting talking points as well. Rhody and VCU have completely overhauled their rosters, and more than a couple of teams have added pieces that could be potential X-factors in helping them to become contenders.

My overwhelming sentiment as I consider the outlook of the league next season is one of excitement over an anticipated level of parity. No team is likely to do what Dayton did last season (and probably won’t even come close), and the standings should have wars going on at all levels. Every team in the consensus “top half,” per se, has reason to believe that they can contend for a championship, and most of the teams that made up the lower part of the standings last season seem to be justifiably looking forward to reaching improved positions – ventures at which, obviously, they can’t all be successful.

I didn’t attempt to cover all of the developments and news stories that have taken place throughout the Atlantic 10 in this article – there have simply been too many and I will need several articles to do so. If you came here to read about Dayton’s outlook in the post-Obi era, what George Mason will look like without Justin Kier, the perhaps underrated recruiting classes of teams like Duquesne and La Salle, or the nice pieces that Mark Schmidt has grabbed for St. Bonaventure off of the transfer market, I’ll touch on all of those topics at a later date. This offseason is going to be particularly long, and there will be plenty of time to do so.

For now, here are my immediate thoughts on what’s been going down within the programs at UMass, VCU, Rhode Island, and GW – all teams that I feel are particularly hard to project for various reasons.