With 1:10 remaining in the fourth quarter of Saint Louis’s 78-69 Tuesday night win over VCU, a brawl broke out in the stands of the Chaifetz Arena delaying the conclusion of the game for several minutes. While it was obviously an awful display, it was also emblematic of a cannibalistic mid-major conference struggling to get out of its own way in the 2024-25 season.
During its wave of expansion in 2012 and 2013, the Atlantic 10 was a clear multi-bid league, the dream of every mid-major, even sending six teams to the 2014 NCAA Tournament. However, after that high-water mark, the conference has settled into its place as a two-bid league, sending that number to four of the last five tournaments, and only producing one tournament team in 2023. Now, after a disastrous Tuesday night for the conference, the A10 is looking like a one-bid league once again.
Dayton started the year red-hot, even beating UConn at the Maui Invitational and taking down Marquette in December. Then, conference play began and they cooled off fast. On Tuesday night Dayton lost 75-53 at St. Bonaventure, and the Flyers are 4-5 across their last nine games and only 4-3 in conference play. Their tailspin has dropped Anthony Grant’s team to 75th in the NCAA’s Net Rankings and 73rd in Kenpom.
With two Quad 1 wins over Big East contenders, Dayton was the conference’s best at-large candidate for the tournament. But barring a massive turnaround that ship appears to have sailed, leaving VCU as the other at-large hopeful if the league was to get two bids into March Madness. The Rams, though, had an even worse night than the Flyers on Tuesday.
VCU is 16-5 (6-2) in Year 2 under former UMBC and Utah State head coach Ryan Odom, who famously knocked off Virginia as a No. 16 seed in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. That record has his team at No. 47 in the Net Rankings, the highest of any A10 team, but they took a big step backward Tuesday with a 78-69 loss at Saint Louis. VCU falling to the Billikens on the road isn’t a catastrophic result for the A10 or the Rams, but the brawl overshadowed the fact that VCU was knocked out of a first-place tie with George Mason.
A brawl breaks out in the stands during VCU-Saint Louis 😬 pic.twitter.com/Xx3I1gQFKj
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 29, 2025
The Patriots, now alone in first place heading into a Wednesday night matchup with last year’s regular season champions Loyola-Chicago, are 72nd in the Net Rankings and have just one Quad 1 opportunity remaining on the schedule, February 22 on the road at VCU (assuming the Rams stay inside the top-75).
That head-to-head could determine the fate of the conference this season because the A10 needs VCU to run away with the regular season title and have another program steal a second bid by winning the conference tournament.
Heading into Tuesday night, there were plenty of possibilities for the league to claim multiple tickets to the big dance, but with every loss by a top team, the path gets narrower.