Atlantic 10 Basketball: 10 elements that have stood out so far in 2022-23

8. Loyola Getting To The Rim

Loyola-Chicago’s start of the season has been an abject disaster, with the details too deep to properly dive into in this column, but the Ramblers have shown one awesome bright spot. A pair of Division 1 newcomers, Cal (PA) transfer Philip Alston and freshman Jalen Quinn, are both incredible at getting to the rim in very different ways.  Alston, who is typically fed the ball in the mid-post has a quick one-step and bursts to the hoop with power, while still whipping the ball off the glass and in with speed.

Quinn is certainly still finding his footing on the court for the most part, but when he sees a driving lane from the top of the key, he bursts through it.  The special part of what he does is the quick dribble through the paint, enabling him to use his 6’3″ frame to shield off defenders away from his left-handed reach.

9. Foster Loyer’s Instincts

This is only so low down because I already have spent so much time talking about it last year but Loyer’s understanding of when to be a point guard vs when to put the team on his back has been forced to recalibrate much more often to the latter this year.  The burden on Loyer is immense in the early going with Sam Mennenga and Des Watson (a revelation off the bench who may soon be worthy of his own section) often being the only other Davidson players who look comfortable on the offensive end.

Loyer is still an elite and willing distributor (5 apg), who is trying to get his young teammates going early on.  But with the Wildcats trailing in the second half of games against Wright St and South Carolina, Loyer went to work getting his own, putting up 28 pts in the 2nd half and both OTs in the win over Wright St and hit 4 threes as part of 21-6 run that put away South Carolina.  And despite the higher volume (2.5 more three-point attempts per game), Loyer is still shooting a nearly identical 43.9% from deep as last year.

10. Mistakes Piling Up

The season so far around the A-10 has been marked by a lack of truly bad losses but has been filled with a lot of missed opportunities.  Most of those painful games have been marked by an abnormally high amount of sloppiness and inattentiveness. Dayton turned the ball over 24 times to UNLV, VCU didn’t make a field goal the final 8.5 minutes against Arizona St, Richmond threw the ball out of bounds on a potential game-winning possession vs Wichita St, Loyola surrendered 45% three-point shooting on mostly wide-open makes for Tulsa and so on.

These are talented teams against similar-level opponents who have been shooting themselves in the foot.  We saw a similar issue for Saint Louis, nearly blowing a late 14-point lead to Memphis, but some well-timed free throw makes and a huge defensive stop erased the Billikens’ mistakes. And that 30-second stretch is basically the difference between SLU’s standing as a likely Top 25 team and the rest of a league that sent its fans into a depression spiral in the same week.

11. Daryl Banks’ Jumper

I had to save St. Bonaventure’s leading scorer (21.0 ppg) for last because I’m not sure how I feel about his shooting yet.  The St. Peter’s transfer loves the mid-range fadeaway and also has a knack for taking contested threes. These shots are certainly encouraged a bit by the Bonnies offense, which runs everything through Banks and point guard Kyrell Luc and requires both of them to take a lot of shots.

When those shots are going in for Banks (like the NCAA Tournament vs Kentucky or the first half this year against St. Francis), he looks like the best player on the court, with the pure jump shooting form to match that accolades.

The problem for Banks is that the shot selection gets very shaky at times and he does have a penchant for trying to get out of shooting slumps with another batch of tough shots.  Time will tell if these shots are necessary for St. Bonaventure to fight for a spot in the middle of the A-10 this year or if they will simply exist to bump up Banks’ point total.