Atlantic 10 Basketball: 5 takeaways from start of 2022-23 conference play

Power Rankings are Impossible

Tier 1: VCU, SLU

Tier 2: Dayton

Tier 3: George Mason, Duquesne, GW, Richmond

Tier 4: UMass (without Fernandes), Fordham, Davidson

Tier 5: Rhode Island, St. Joe’s, St. Bonaventure

Tier 6. La Salle, Loyola Chicago

Outside of the matchups involving a couple of teams at the top of the standings and Loyola at the bottom, one may as well draw result predictions for any given game from a hat. Just look at the scores from this past week; Dayton couldn’t take care of business against Rhode Island, and Fordham went up to Olean and beat Bona by 14.

This type of parity will make things extremely interesting in Brooklyn, but it also makes it impossible to get a read on who is, for example, the “fourth best team” in the conference with any semblance of certainty. I won’t even try to rank the teams 1-15 right now, but, since you’ve read this far, let me at least reward you with what I view as semi-stable/enduring tiers above.

Expect this to change in a week, as the A-10 has shown that no result is impossible. A lot can happen in the next month, with plenty up for grabs.