Atlantic 10 Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2020-21 season

DAYTON, OH - FEBRUARY 28: Trey Landers #3, head coach Anthony Grant and Ryan Mikesell #33 of the Dayton Flyers celebrate winning the Atlantic 10 regular season championship following their win over the Davidson Wildcats at UD Arena on February 28, 2020 in Dayton, Ohio. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images) /

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DAYTON, OH – FEBRUARY 11: Fatts Russell #1 of the Rhode Island Rams (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /

Tier 3: Rhode Island Rams

If VCU is hard to project, Rhody is impossible to project. After a rocky finish to what had mostly been a great year, David Cox had to deal with the departure of essentially half of his roster over these last couple of months. Cyril Langevine and Jeff Dowtin graduated, Tyrese Martin, Jacob Toppin, and Mekhi Long entered the transfer portal, and it’s still unknown if Fatts Russell will be returning to Kingston after declaring for the NBA draft.

Not all the news for Rams’ fans this offseason has been bad, however, even if most of it has. The Mitchell twins, former top 100 big men Makhel and Makhi, transferred into the program from Maryland (we’ll have to see if they get waivers to play), the incoming Freshman class is solid, and sit-out transfers like DJ Johnson and Jeremy Sheppard are both versatile scorers. Johnson is a former JUCO-star and 6’7” 185” wing that shot 43% from deep in his last season at Williston State, and Jeremy Sheppard put up solid numbers (9.2 points, 3.5 assists) two seasons ago as a guard at East Carolina.

Combine all of the aforementioned with some other solid returning pieces like Antwan Walker and Jermaine Harris, and the Rams will still be relatively talented by A10 standards. For that reason, their ceiling is still reasonably high, perhaps the highest of all the teams in this tier, but there are still just so many questions that only time will be able to answer. Will Fatts return? Will the NCAA vote to allow immediate eligibility for first-time transfers? If they do, will the Mitchell twins be able to assert themselves off the bat as premier A10 big men? Who will fill the remaining scholarships? There is such a wide range of possibilities for all of those answers that it’s just as easy to envision the Rams finishing in 4th as it is 11th.

For now, I view this third tier as the safest bet for the Rams. No matter what happens, I think they will be too talented to finish as a bottom 2 or 3 team, but it’s also too risky to bet on them being a real contender. The ceiling is definitely that, but a lot of things will have to break right for that to happen.

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