Atlantic 10 Basketball: Bonnies on top heading into conference tournament
March is finally here, and with it comes the frenzy of regular season conclusions, conference tournaments, and – eventually, and finally, – the NCAA Tournament. With a handful of conference tournaments already underway, one of the most topsy-turvy leagues in the country in Atlantic 10 Basketball will see theirs get underway on the morning of March 3rd.
It has been just over two weeks since the last A-10 power rankings were published, and a significant amount has changed since then. At-large aspirations have been destroyed, Cinderellas have fallen and risen, and a certain team has won the Atlantic 10 regular-season title, outright, for the first time in their program’s history.
For the third-straight set of rankings, CBSSports’ Jon Rothstein’s “The Atlantic 10 is cannibalizing itself” tweet remains true. Two A-10 squads – St. Bonaventure and VCU – are currently projected to be in the tournament field, while the Saint Louis Billikens are fighting for their at-large lives. All three rank in the top 50 in both KenPom and NET.
Others – Davidson, Richmond, Dayton, and URI – are all between 100-50 in both KenPom and NET, and are all capable of running through what should be a chaotic A-10 Tournament. That is all without mentioning teams like Saint Joseph’s and George Mason, both of whom have gotten hot at the right time and have proven that they can usurp top-tier squads.
The Atlantic 10 Tournament will get underway on the morning of March 3rd, with an 11:00 am tip between Saint Joseph’s and La Salle. The tournament is slated to be jointly held between VCU and Richmond – before moving to Dayton for the championship tilt on March 14th.
With the tournament on the immediate horizon, and with several teams on the brink of having their tumultuous 2020-21 campaign come to a close, it only feels fitting to have a final set of power rankings before the conference tournament – and to determine where all 14 Atlantic 10 squads sit heading into March Madness.