Atlantic 10 Basketball: 2021-22 storylines and questions heading into league play

Non-Conference Headlines

St. Bonaventure’s Blunders

The preseason favorite Bonnies have had a solid start to the season, with their resume anchored by three Q2 wins (vs Boise St, Clemson, and Marquette) in the Charleston Classic.  However, a bad home loss to 3-7 Northern Iowa and a brutal shellacking at the hands of Virginia Tech have eliminated any hope of a Top 25 season for St. Bonaventure.

All five senior starters have played great on the offensive end but last year’s signature defense (20th in Kenpom in defensive efficiency) has taken a step back (102nd).  Those five continue to log huge minutes (80.6% of total team minutes), despite Kyle Lofton missing three games to injury.

But Lofton is back, Jaren Holmes is putting up career highs in points and rebounds while doubling last year’s assist numbers and Osun Osunniyi leads the A-10 in blocks.  The Bonnies are still prime title contenders, but enter conference play in a lesser position than many expected.

Dayton, The Wildcard

Across college basketball, only four teams are 3-0 or better in Q1 games (Purdue, Iowa St, Providence, Dayton), and in the Top 190 teams, per NET, only one has 3 or more Q4 losses (Dayton).  No other stat is needed to tell us that the Flyers are a more unpredictable wildcard than Charlie Kelly in a van full of gas.

Dayton’s starting point guard, freshman Malachi Smith has gone from playing nine minutes in the season opener to being Top 5 in the A-10 in assists (4.7 games). Eight players average between 6.0 and 10.5 points per game, and all eight have had at least one game where they made zero or one field goal.

Dayton also has relied most heavily on a pair of freshmen, Smith and DaRon Holmes II, to carry them in their biggest games, but that’s all just part of the craziness in a season defined by a game-winner to beat a Top 10 team (Kansas) by a player taking his first shot of the day (Mustapha Amzil), after their star (Smith) had just gotten blocked.

No Contending Certainties

St. Bonaventure, Davidson, VCU, Richmond, Dayton, St Louis, and to a lesser extent, Rhode Island and George Mason, have all had moments that have made us believe they could win the A-10 this season, but they’ve all given just as many reasons to believe they could fall to the middle of the pack.  Davidson has the aforementioned win over Alabama, but they’ve spent the rest of the season beating up on teams outside the Top 150 and blew a lead against New Mexico St.

Richmond has played well in spurts of every game and has handily taken care of every lesser opponent they’ve played. However, the Spiders are 0-4 vs the Kenpom Top 100 (2-3 vs NET Top 100). VCU is 3rd in the nation in defensive efficiency, smothered Syracuse and Vanderbilt in wins, and hung tough with #1 Baylor.  Meanwhile, the Rams also failed to score 55 points in home losses to Chattanooga and Wagner.

New Third-Year Stars- With the exception of St. Joe’s sophomore point guard Jordan Hall (16.6 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 6.4 apg triple nickel), the seniors of St. Bonaventure and Richmond, and Dayton’s freshmen, the A-10’s most impressive performances have belonged to a big group of players who have made the jump to All-Conference level in their third season. The unofficial A-10 Player of the Non-Conference was the league’s scoring leader Tyler Burton, who not only put together an impressive 18.8 ppg on 45% three-point shooting but also led a Richmond team filled with big men with 7.0 rpg.

Hyunjung Lee has taken on the burden of leading Davidson’s stellar offense in stride, scoring 17.5 ppg while scorching the net at a super high volume (42% from 3 on a shade below 7 attempts per game). Lee has also nearly doubled his rebounding output, despite no increase in minutes. St. Louis has remained a good team after the Javonte Perkins injury, behind a huge jump from Gibson Jimerson, who has been bounced back from losing his starting spot last season, and the easy shots created by the nation’s assist leader, Yuri Collins (7.9 apg, career-high 10.1 ppg).

Jimerson has maintained his strong outside shooting (39.7% from 3) but has made his biggest strides replacing Perkins production inside the arc, going from 1 made two-pointer per game last year to 3 a game this year, and getting to the foul line 4.5 times per game, as opposed to less than once a game last year, with 88.9% free throw shooting.

Noah Fernandes leads a Top 50 UMass offense in scoring (16.8 ppg) and is Top 50 nationally in assist rate (5.4 apg). Josh Oduro has built off some huge games at the end of last year and is the most efficient high volume scorer in the conference (17.4 ppg, 59.6% fg %). Makhel Mitchell has put himself squarely in the All-Defensive team discussion with his 3.0 blocks per game, and is now a double-digit scorer (11.1 ppg), largely thanks to a huge improvement in free throw shooting (46.9% to 70.3%).