Atlantic 10 Basketball: Early 2020 offseason storylines and observations

Boom or Bust Rams – Will Rhody and VCU find ways to contend?

UMass isn’t the only team that will have a different look to it next season; Rhody and VCU won’t even slightly resemble what they looked like in ‘19-20. Starting with Rhody, not only will they have to find ways to replace graduates like Jeff Dowtin and Cyril Langevine, but also transfers like Tryese Martin (UConn) and Mekhi Long, and it remains to be seen if Fatts Russell will be moving on to the professional ranks as well.

The news so far this offseason hasn’t been entirely bad for Coach David Cox. The former top 100 recruits Mekhi and Makhel Mitchell (twin big men) will be joining the team after playing limited roles on a good Maryland team. They have “boom or bust” written all over them, but it’s not hard to envision them exploding to form one of the best frontcourts in the A10 by virtue of their talent.

As far as other incoming pieces, Cox will once again have another promising Freshman group to develop, and Jeremy Sheppard is a transfer guard from East Carolina that averaged solid numbers in a superior conference (9.2 points, 3.5 assists, 2.1 rebounds per game). Long story short, the Rams will not be devoid of talent – far from it. I haven’t even mentioned solid role players like Jermaine Harris and Antwan Walker, but it’s downright impossible to predict where they’ll end up in the standings.

What the Mitchell twins are in the microform, the team as a whole is in the macro. I wouldn’t be surprised if the team became a straight-up dumpster fire because of things like a lack of chemistry and anger over poor results, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they figure things out and find a way to compete with the conference’s top dogs.

The same types of things can be said for VCU, even if the upside for them isn’t quite what it is for Rhody. In terms of production, it’s tough to look past the losses of guys like De’Riante Jenkins, Marcus Santos Silva, and Marcus Evans, but there’s something to be said for the fact that the team’s chemistry was just off during the second of the year, and perhaps a fresh start is exactly what the program needs.

There’s still a lot of talent left for Coach Mike Rhoades to work with between two consecutive fantastic recruiting classes and players like Vince Williams and KeShawn Curry, and there’s a world in which Bones Hyland makes a jump and becomes one of the best seven or eight players in the league. As I mentioned before, the Rams probably aren’t contenders for the title even if everything works out in the best possible way, but they’re still a team that could either end up in the bottom 4 or finish in the 4-7 range and be a sleeper team in Brooklyn.