That end of the floor should remain VCU’s calling card this season with ballhawking guard Ace Baldwin Jr. VCUĪn anemic offense held back the Rams from going dancing in 2021–22, but Mike Rhoades’s team posted a top-15 defense per KenPom for the third time in the last four seasons. This team has the athleticism, star power and experience necessary to get to the NCAA tournament and make some noise once it’s there. That trio will be a nightmare for opposing teams to guard, and Saint Louis pairs that elite offensive skill with a pair of dirty-work guys in Missouri transfer Javon Pickett and Francis Okoro up front. Now, Perkins returns to complete an incredibly talented roster that also features the nation’s defending leader in assists in Yuri Collins and elite shooter Gibson Jimerson. The Billikens winning 23 games despite losing star Javonte Perkins for the season a few weeks before tip-off last fall was an impressive achievement. Postseason Projection: Second Weekend Upside 2. 1 seed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the ceiling here is still sky-high. This group won’t be as dynamic offensively as the ’19–20 Flyers who were on their way to a No. Sophomores DaRon Holmes II and Malachi Smith seem poised to blossom into household names nationally-Holmes as a two-way interior force and Smith as one of the better young point guards in the sport. After a disastrous start, the Flyers played like a top-25 team most of the way and now will essentially run it back. In a year in which men’s college basketball was the oldest it had been in a long time, Dayton went through 2021–22 with a rotation nearly entirely made up of freshmen and sophomores. All this is a recipe for success: At-large bids, NCAA tournament wins and more.Ī-10 predicted order of finish: 1. Two extremely well-regarded young coaches in Drew Valentine and Kim English ply their trade in this league, and some of the league’s best programs (VCU, Dayton, Saint Louis) all have had stability at the top. The headliners are Frank Martin, who coached South Carolina to a Final Four and is in at UMass Archie Miller, who takes over at Rhode Island with a résumé that includes an Elite Eight while at Dayton and Fran Dunphy, a legend in Philadelphia who took the La Salle job. Look no further than the caliber of coaches (and the money committed to them) brought in this offseason. So much of success in college basketball is determined by investment, and recent moves throughout the Atlantic 10 shows a league invested in big-time success on the hardwood. As part of its 2022–23 men’s basketball preseason coverage, Sports Illustrated is rolling out previews for each of the top 10 conferences.
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