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 – MARCH 07: Jamison Battle #10 of the George Washington Colonials(Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /

Tier 4: GW Colonials

GW could be an interesting sleeper candidate to keep an eye on this year. Jamion Christian had a better season than might have been expected in his first year as head coach, finishing 11th in the standings with a Freshman-led team (not particularly heralded Freshmen either). The roster for this upcoming season doesn’t look like it will be out of this world, but it has “sneaky good” potential written all over it.

Jameer Nelson Jr, Jamison Battle and Maceo Jack have all proven themselves as fringe all-conference level talents, and they’ll be joined by some potentially nice additions from the transfer portal in Sloan Seymour, a long ball shooter who scored 9.1 per game as a Freshman at Siena, and Matthew Moyer, a grad-transfer Big from Vanderbilt. The two more promising transfers – Ricky Lindo (Maryland) and James Bishop (LSU) – are both underclassmen, so we will need to see how the NCAA votes on the issue of one-time transfers getting immediate eligibility, but either of them would be huge additions to this roster if they could get waivers.

Even if the transfers fit in nicely, though, the Colonials’ overall depth still leaves a lot to be desired on paper. It also has to be taken into account that this will still only be Christian’s second year at the helm, so I’m not expecting the Colonials to make a huge leap in the standings just yet. I view that as coming eventually, once guys like Battle and Nelson are running things as Seniors. For this year, if the defense is improved (was 13th in efficiency during conference play) and the roster questions are mostly figured out, a finish of 6th or 7th isn’t inconceivable, but questions also make the floor for this team is among the lowest in the league as well.

For now, it’s probably safest to look at GW as a strong candidate to get out of playing the Wednesday game in Brooklyn, but also as a team that still has some work to do before they can be justifiably put into the top 7.

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