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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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MARCH 16: Kellan Grady #31 of the Davidson Wildcats (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images) /

Tier 2: Davidson Wildcats

The Wildcats disappointed last season with a 7th-place finish in the standings, but it was always known that their depth was thin, so it wasn’t surprising that injuries to Luke Frampton and KiShawn Pritchett ended their hopes of earning an NCAA Tournament bid.

In this upcoming season, Coach Bob McKillop and co. will have to go to war without former conference co-Player of the Year Jon Axel Gudmundsson, but he’ll still have enough talent on the roster to make the Cats relevant again. Kellan Grady has been somewhat forgotten as a premier A10 scorer because of a failure to become the NBA lottery-pick that he showed flashes of being as a Freshman, but it’s not as though he’s totally disappeared over these last two seasons. He managed to put up more than 17 points per game this past year, and now he’ll have a chance to truly star in JAG’s absence.

As far as players that will be there to help Grady out, just like with UMass there aren’t many bona fide A10 stars, but there’s a bevy of guys that could potentially go off on any given night. Hyungjung Lee was one of the league’s best Freshmen, Luka Brajkovic and Carter Collins are proven role players, 3-point specialist Luke Frampton should be back to full health, and the incoming class is currently the highest-rated one in the conference (247Sports). Sam Mennenga, a forward from New Zealand, is ranked 150th (highest among all A10 freshman), and backcourt players Emory Lanier and Grant Huffman are both 3-star recruits themselves.

If everything holds up for this team from a health standpoint, they could be dangerous – as in top-of-the-conference “dangerous.” The problem is, the same thing could be said for last year’s team, and even though the depth should better moving forward, it’s still not spectacular, especially in the frontcourt. At the end of the day, though, I never want to bet against Bob McKillop figuring things out after a tough year, and I have to think the Cats will find a way to outdo last year’s performance. I view the most realistic range for this team moving forward as being anywhere from ~4-8 in the standings, but my gut says to bank on it being the higher side of that.

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