2024-25 Conference Previews: Atlantic 10
All the news fit to print about Seth Greenberg's favorite five-bid league
Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. This one is a paid piece, and there’s a link to sign up below.
You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show.
Atlantic 10 That’s Now 15 But Will Be 14 But It’s Still Better Than When They Briefly Had 16 Despite Last Having Ten Teams in the Conference in 1991
Tier 1
VCU
Saint Louis
Dayton
Tier 2
St. Bonaventure
George Mason
Loyola Chicago
Saint Joseph’s
Tier 3
Richmond
George Washington
Duquesne
UMass
Fordham
Rhode Island
Tier 4
La Salle
Davidson
Look, this is getting stupid. 15 teams? It’s not as if A15 sounds that insane compared to A10. You just sound slightly more like a British highway. Change your name. “But then we’d have to change the name and logo every year!” Alright, then look in the mirror and stop adding/subtracting teams. I’ve solved conference realignment, world hunger, and the 2024 election. Boom. That being said, please bring back this logo permanently.
Assuming the A10 stays the A10, I do think that it’s generally trending in the right direction thanks to a remarkably good collection of coaches. The A10 finished 8th in KenPom’s conference rankings last year, its highest finish since 2016-17 and a tremendous recovery from an all-time low of 13th the previous season. I don’t think anyone involved with an Atlantic 10 school is under the illusion that they can or should be an ACC-level conference; they just want to be frisky. Nothing wrong whatsoever with being an AAC or MWC-level conference long-term.
The coaching point is the key to me. This is a genuinely terrific collection at the moment: Josh Schertz, Chris Mooney, Mark Schmidt, Drew Valentine, Ryan Odom as your top five is pretty spicy. Anthony Grant is still here (don’t tell Dayton fans). Tony Skinn at George Mason seems like a bright young coach. Frank Martin, a guy who has made multiple Elite Eights, may represent the average coach here. A few years ago a guy like Keith Urgo at Fordham, who has a .500 record through two years at easily the worst A10 program, would have been an obvious star in the conference. Right now he might be the league’s ninth-best coach, which is no offense to him and is more a celebration of what else is here.
While I was writing this, Seth Greenberg of ESPN went out and said this conference could get five bids, which is an insane thing insane people say, but two or even three with the right mix is reasonable enough. I’d break it down as such: I think this conference should have three teams finish inside the NET top 75. It can probably get five or six, maybe even seven, inside the top 100. That’s generally enough for, like, 1.8 bids. That sounds mildly disappointing compared to five, obviously, but you get the point: one team probably has a good at-large case, someone else wins the conference tournament. Worse ways to operate than that in existence.
The separator from Tier 1 to Tier 2 here is that, on paper, Tier 1’s teams are the ones I would put in a preseason top 75 (or higher) nationally. Tier 2 are all somewhere in that 85-110 range where you don’t have to have that much go right to be Tier 1 but you’ve simply got more questions than the best teams here. Anyway, too much froth.
I debated my champion here for far too long but I settled on VCU, who has the best mix of returning production, prospective talent, small-but-mighty portal pickups, and yes, good coaching. I feel unusually rosy about this conference, as you might note! Depth is the concern here, as all of eight players on the entire roster have played a minute of college basketball, but those eight all either have rotation or starting experience at VCU/their previous school. You don’t necessarily need more than an eight-man rotation anyway, so barring multiple injuries it’s fine.
Ryan Odom has pulled off a somewhat rare feat in the portal era: bring back four starters, including your three leading scorers, from a team that made the A10 final and had a good season. The headliner nearly transferred to Villanova and thought better of it. Max Shulga elected to return for his super-senior year, his fourth spent with Odom as his HC. They first thrived together at Utah State, with Shulga breaking out as a star in 2022-23 then re-breaking out in Odom’s first year last season. By Torvik’s Player of the Year rating scale, Shulga was the fourth-best player in the conference last year. He’s the only one in the top seven that elected to stay at their school.
The number of guys that can do what Shulga does is pretty small. Would you like a list of them? It’s a list of 2023-24 players who posted quality efficiency on good usage, shot 50% 2PT/40% 3PT, and made 50+ twos and 50+ threes.
Sears is the preseason SEC POTY. Reeves was a first-team All-SEC guy. Lanier got seven figures to transfer to Tennessee. Those are the only guys you can even somewhat comfortably put in the realm of a Shulga. That’s a massive get, as is getting Joe Bamisile and Zeb Jackson to return. Bamisile is a highly dynamic shooter that created two-way magic when on the court with Shulga last year; when together, Bamisile shot 36% 3PT/52% 2PT while Shulga dropped 44% 3PT/56% 2PT. They played like a top-40 team when both were on the court together and barely a top-100 team when one or the other was on the bench.
Jackson is more complicated, but still good. A fantastic and tenacious defender, Jackson finally found a little bit of offensive game last year as a secondary ball handler to take pressure off Shulga, but he remains a frustrating shooter in general. Still: tremendous defender who can get away with average offense. I also like role guys Fats Billups III, an insane name for a 40% 3PT shooter, and Christian Fermin, last year’s starting center who adds fantastic rim protection if a very incomplete offensive game.
To boost the offense, Odom brought in Phillip Russell from UT Arlington, who was arguably the best offensive player in the WAC last year. Russell is a great shooter in general but he’s developed his game significantly over the years, going from a PG who needed to get downhill to be effective to a PG that’s comfortable shooting off the dribble and creating for himself. VCU badly needs someone like that to take pressure off of Shulga and Jackson.
The defensive boost might be even more interesting. Jack Clark started for Clemson last year and elected to move over to VCU. Now, does Clark do a single thing offensively that’s interesting at all? No. But has he consistently graded out as a great defender throughout college, with Clemson’s defense being four points better per 100 possessions last year with him on the court? Yes. Odom can get creative with his transfer pair, using Russell together with Shulga and Bamisile to provide the best offensive lineup and Clark and Fermin together to generate high-end defense. That’s why they’re #1: it simply makes the most sense.
If it’s not VCU I like Saint Louis, who can potentially take the biggest year-over-year jump of anyone in this conference behind new HC Josh Schertz. I’ve been a Schertz superfan for a while now, so it pleases me to have seen such a significant rise in his career in a short time. You will meet few coaches more analytically-minded than he, to the point that I think he and Nate Oats would make for a fascinating conversational pair. (Wonder what they talked about after Alabama and Indiana State played last year!)
I’ve referenced Synergy’s Shot Quality metric a few times before; while imperfect and almost too objective, it’s pretty good at showing you the quality of a system’s ideas if maybe not the system itself. Schertz’s last five offenses, between Indiana State and D2 Lincoln Memorial, have ranked #1, #3, #93 (first year at a new school), #1, and #6 at the D1 (‘21-’24) and D2 (‘19-’21) levels. The only other coaches to go top five in offensive SSQ three or more times in that stretch are Dan Hurley and Nate Oats. Schertz’s offenses, on shot selection alone, can start each game with a five or six-point advantage over their opponent. That matters, I’d say.
What also matters is getting the clear star of your former school and arguably the second-best player to follow you to your next stop. The headliner here is obviously Robbie Avila, who was probably the single best offensive player available in the portal this offseason. A former two-star HS recruit, Avila has a bit of a doughy build and takes some of the most unintentionally funny photos in existence. He also happens to be one of four players in the entire country who put up a 125+ ORtg on 25%+ USG last year. You may have heard of the other four, and you may note Avila has more assists than the point guard on the list.
Finding appropriate comps for Avila is nigh-impossible; the best I can think of is that he plays like Belmont-era Dylan Windler or if Grant Williams shot more threes and somehow looked even dorkier. Among all returning players for ‘24-25, he ranks 5th in Torvik’s PRPG! (points over replacement), 9th in Box Plus-Minus, 6th in Offensive Box Plus-Minus, and is the only player in America with 150+ made shots at the rim and a 20%+ Assist%. This is one of the best basketball players in America, period.
Alongside Avila is Isaiah Swope, who made his name last year as Indiana State’s designated tough-shots guy. Swope was the only rotation piece Synergy pegged with an SSQ at below one point per shot, which tracks. Indiana State as a whole attempted 290 pull-up jumpers last year, one of the lowest numbers in the nation; Swope alone attempted 183 of those. When you need a late-clock bailout, he’s your guy. A career 38% 3PT shooter on 235 attempts per season is of high interest to basically any coach, particularly when Synergy notes that an average shooter with his particular jump shot diet should be at 30%.
Along with surprise returner Gibson Jimerson, who shot between 39-43% from three his first four seasons before dropping to 35% on a bad offensive team last year, Schertz has three fantastic offensive pieces to build around. I can’t quite get there putting his SLU team past VCU, though, because the rest of the roster has some notable holes. With the 1/3/5 all filled, the best option at the 2 is either WVU transfer Kobe Johnson (a good defender and horrible offensive player) or returner Larry Hughes II (a good defender and horrible offensive player). The 4 is likely Kalu Anya from Brown, who has a career 94 ORtg and 11 total made threes, or AJ Casey from Miami, a former lauded recruit who - you guessed it - has awful offensive numbers with one career made three.
If this were a 3-on-3 game, Saint Louis would have a serious case at being top-30 nationally. If they can find a fourth or fifth guy to make things work - I do quite like Kellen Thames - then I think they’ll seriously challenge and possibly surpass VCU. Even if they just finish second and have inconsistent spurts of play particularly on defense, it’s still a great debut for Schertz, which is becoming his norm.
BELOW THE LINE ($): Way too many teams with differences between expectations and reality