1. St. Bonaventure (7-1, 5-1): Picked fourth in the preseason poll, the Bonnies have stamped themselves as the team to beat by winning at preseason favorite Richmond, 69-66 on Jan. 2, and routing Virginia Commonwealth 70-54 on Wednesday in Olean, N.Y. They have won five straight games since losing their A-10 opener 63-57 at Rhode Island.
St. Bonaventure overcame a 40-25 halftime deficit against VCU by outscoring the Rams 45-14 in the second half. Coach Mark Schmidt called it the best half any of his teams have played in his 14 seasons as head coach.
Defense has carried the Bonnies, who lead the A-10 in field-goal percentage defense (38.7) in conference games.
2. Massachusetts (5-3, 4-1): The Minutemen doubled their A-10 win total from 2019 (4-14) to 2020 (8-10) and appear to be on their way to their first winning season in conference play since 2015 (10-8). They have one of the leading candidates for A-10 Player of the Year in sophomore center Tre Mitchell, who leads the league with 22.2 points per game.
However, it’s too early to tell if UMass is a true contender because it has not beaten anyone in the top six of the standings.
3. Richmond (9-3, 3-1): The Spiders paused team activities Jan. 12 because of COVID-19 testing results and resumed practice Wednesday. Their home game against La Salle on Saturday will be their first game since Jan. 9. Their best victory was at Davidson (80-74 on Dec. 30).
4. Davidson (9-5, 5-2): The Wildcats have beaten four of the bottom six teams in the league by double digits and lost close games at home to Richmond and Dayton.
5. Dayton (8-3, 4-2): The Flyers play at VCU at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and then play at Saint Louis at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. CBS Sports Network will televise both games.
Dayton swept both teams last season on its way to an 18-0 league record and will play both twice again this season. Saint Louis plays at UD Arena on Feb. 19. Dayton plays VCU on Senior Night on March 3.
Dayton takes a three-game winning streak into Saturday’s game at Richmond but hasn’t played since Sunday because a home game Wednesday was cancelled because of George Washington’s COVID-19 testing results. No makeup date has been announced for that game, though neither Dayton or GW has a mid-week game in the last week of February.
Credit: David Jablonski - Staff Writer
Credit: David Jablonski - Staff Writer
6. Virginia Commonwealth (10-4, 3-2): The Rams have beaten three teams with losing A-10 records (George Mason, George Washington and Saint Joseph’s) and have lost to two of the top seven teams (St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island).
Dayton put its worst performance of the season (a 55-54 loss at Fordham) behind it by winning three straight games. VCU will have to put its worst half of the season behind it to beat Dayton on Saturday.
“In the second half, because we couldn’t get back to where we were, we weren’t handling St. Bonaventure’s success,” coach Mike Rhoades told reporters after the game. “We weren’t handling it. We got too emotional, and then it snowballed. And that was a terrible half.”
7. Saint Louis (7-1, 0-0): The No. 25 Billikens are the A-10′s only top-25 team, and they’re also the only team that hasn’t played a conference game. They finally returned to practice Friday after weeks of battling COVID-19 problems and are scheduled to return to action against Dayton on Tuesday at Chaifetz Arena. It will be their first game since Dec. 23.
Saint Louis postponed seven games. The A-10 has not announced how it will handle the award of the regular-season championship or conference tournament seeds if all teams don’t play the same number of games, though an announcement about how that will work could come out next week.
Coach Travis Ford told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch his team didn’t have a positive tests in sixth months before this outbreak, which has seen himself and at least 11 players test positive.
“We didn’t do anything different,” Ford said. “We’re never going to know how we got it, but it’s obvious that once one got it, it spread very quickly.”
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