With the meat of the Atlantic 10 Tournament ready to get going, both Big 5 representatives still have a shot at the crown.
La Salle got its tourney appearance underway on Wednesday night with an 88-73 first-round upset over Duquesne at the Barclays Center. The 14th-seeded Explorers received an A-10 Tournament school record 36 points from scoring machine Jordan Price as they advanced to face Davidson.
La Salle will have to hope Price can continue that and then some throughout the rest of its stay in Brooklyn if it wants to pull off the monumental task of running the table. After all, having the conference’s third-leading scorer didn’t matter much this season. Despite Price’s 19.1 points per game, the Explorers (9-21) stumbled at pretty much every turn and endured two extended losing streaks, including a 10-game skid at one point.
But everything starts anew in the conference tournament.
No team likely wants to hear that more than St. Joe’s. After putting together a strong season and being in the mix for the A-10 regular-season title, the Hawks faltered down the stretch by dropping their final two games to St. Bonaventure and Duquesne. The defeats marked their first losing streak of the entire season.
That threw a bit of a hiccup into the Hawks’ plans for the Big Dance. While St. Joe’s should still comfortably be in, it would definitely like to avoid sitting on a losing skid come Selection Sunday.
To get back on track, fourth-seeded St. Joe’s (24-7) will lean on its forward tandem of DeAndre’ Bembry and Isaiah Miles when it opens its tourney run Friday. The A-10 Player of the Year (Bembry) and A-10 Most Improved Player (Miles) combined for 35.0 points, 15.9 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game this season.
News
SJU hopes that combo and some stout defense will get it back to looking like the team that had one of the best road records in the nation and five separate win streaks of at least three games during the regular season.
Biggest threat
With Dayton, St. Bonaventure and VCU all claiming a share of the Atlantic 10 regular-season title, it’s a pretty tough call. However, we’ll go with the Bonnies on this one.
St. Bonaventure ripped off five straight victories to close out its schedule and grab a piece of the crown. It would have been 11 wins in a row if the Bonnies didn’t trip up during a 71-64 loss to La Salle on Feb. 17, which snapped the Explorers’ previously mentioned 10-game skid.
The Bonnies’ three-headed monster of Marcus Posley (19.3 ppg), Jaylen Adams (18.2 ppg) and Dion Wright (16.4) has been giving opponents fits over the past six weeks and there is no reason to think it will stop in Brooklyn.
Not to mention, St. Bonaventure has St. Joe’s number with five straight wins over its conference foe in the last two seasons.
Darkhorse
The A-10 runs pretty deep, but we’ll go with George Washington. The Colonials are perhaps the most bubblicious of all the conference’s NCAA Tournament candidates. With a 22-9 mark overall to go with an RPI of 63 and a SOS of 126, GW has work to do and you can’t underestimate a desperate team.
It’s not like George Washington, which is the fifth seed and opens Atlantic 10 Tournament play on Thursday against No. 13 Saint Louis, isn’t capable of taking down upper-echelon teams. George Washington had the conference’s best win of the season when it knocked off then-No. 6 Virginia in its second game of the season.
Player to watch
You certainly can’t go wrong with guys like Bembry and Posley, but this one has to be Davidson’s Jack Gibbs. The A-10’s leading scorer with 24.8 points per game, Gibbs can flat out fill it up. He scored 30 points or more 10 times this season, including three games above 40. Plus, he’s still able to contribute in other ways with 4.9 assists and 4.3 rebounds a night.
Gibbs has to be licking his chops for the Wildcats’ second-round matchup with the Explorers after scoring just eight points in a win over La Salle last month.
Best-case scenario
For La Salle, it’s pretty simple: go out and win the tournament. It’s the Explorers’ only hope of making the NCAA Tournament. A miracle, but this is the time of year for those types of things.
St. Joe’s likely has its ticket to the Big Dance already punched, but another win or two wouldn’t hurt. Or the Hawks could put all the doubt to rest and go win the entire thing. They have all of the pieces to make a run and have proven more than capable of competing against the conference’s other top squads.
Two seasons ago, St. Joe’s came into the Atlantic 10 Tournament sitting squarely on the bubble and ripped off three straight wins to claim the title for the conference’s automatic bid. Head coach Phil Martelli has talked since about how the Hawks forgot that championship swagger. No better time than the present to get it back.
Worst-case scenario
La Salle is living on borrowed time, so a loss now wouldn’t do anymore damage to an already lost season.
If St. Joe’s somehow suffers an early defeat and is sitting on three consecutive losses heading into Selection Sunday, there could be a lot of hand wringing on Hawk Hill. That would then take some of the luster off its strong 2015-16 campaign and possibly have it jockeying for a spot with teams boasting more recent tourney success such as a Wichita State or Syracuse.
That’s a bad situation for St. Joe’s, which could turn even worse if the Hawks’ name isn’t called by the selection committee this Sunday evening.