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Poor non-league performance could haunt the Atlantic 10 in March
In the past nine years, the Atlantic 10 has never received fewer than three NCAA tournament bids.
That streak could be in jeopardy this season the way the league has sputtered out of the starting blocks the past four weeks.
Only one Atlantic 10 team has notched a victory over an opponent in Ken Pomeroy’s top 50, Rhode Island’s 76-71 neutral-court win over Cincinnati on Nov. 19. The closest thing the league has to a marquee win besides that is Dayton’s road win over middling Alabama, VCU’s rout of disinterested LSU or George Washington’s victory at erratic Temple.
The Atlantic 10’s best teams have compensated a bit by avoiding sub-100 losses, but the rest of the league has been far more generous. Among the most damaging of the league’s 15 sub-100 losses include Fordham falling to Sacred Heart, St. Bonaventure falling to Arkansas-Little Rock and La Salle falling to Texas Southern.
Those results leave the Atlantic 10 seventh in conference RPI, well behind the Big East, Big 12, ACC, Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12. More alarmingly, there aren’t too many Atlantic 10 teams who have asserted themselves as potential at-large contenders.
Injury-plagued Dayton (6-2) has stayed afloat without starting forwards Josh Cunningham and Kendall Pollard for long stretches, but the Flyers have let their best chances for quality wins slip away. Not only did their late comeback at Saint Mary’s fall just short, they also suffered an upset loss to Nebraska in the opening round of the Wooden Legacy tournament, costing them a semifinal crack at UCLA and relegating them to the loser’s bracket.
Rhode Island (6-3) has offset its victory over Cincinnati by dropping its three other games against good competition. The Rams fell by 10 at Duke, by three at Valparaiso and by three at rival Providence, missed opportunities that will shrink their margin for error in the coming months when Atlantic 10 play begins.
Six wins in its first seven games had VCU (6-3) in decent shape before its recent two-game skid. The Rams have dropped back-to-back games against Illinois and Georgia Tech, both of whom are expected to finish in the bottom half of their respective conferences.
A surprise NCAA tournament contender may yet emerge from the Atlantic 10’s second tier, but none of those teams have done enough to distinguish themselves so far. That’s why at this point three NCAA tournament bids seems like no sure thing for the Atlantic 10 and two seems like an unusually realistic possibility.
The Atlantic 10 does have a few more chances for quality non-conference wins — UMass visits Providence, La Salle meets Georgetown and George Washington visits Miami, among others.
But there’s pressure on the league to take advantage of those opportunities. Otherwise come January and February when Atlantic 10 teams are beating up on each other, those wins won’t count for very much.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
