A-10 conference tournament preview

This is part 26 of a 32-part preview.

Standings:
Rhode Island 15-3
St Bonaventure 14-4
Davidson 13-5
St Joseph's 10-8
VCU 9-9
St Louis 9-9
George Mason 9-9
Richmond 9-9
Dayton 8-10
Duquesne 7-11
George Washington 7-11
LaSalle 7-11
UMass 5-13
Fordham 4-14

Format:
March 7-11.  Washington DC is the neutral site host.

Matchups:
1) Rhode Island vs. 8/9) VCU/Dayton
4) St Joseph's vs. 5/12/13) George Mason/LaSalle/UMass
3) Davidson vs. 6/11/14) St Louis/George Washington/Fordham
2) St Bonaventure vs. 7/10) Richmond/Duquesne

The stakes:
The A-10 had a spectacular tire fire of a season.  11th in CRPI is absolutely terrible for them, and they are littered with teams who absorbed a million losses in the non-con.  Only 3 teams better than 10 wins in conference just hammers home the point.  It was a catastrophe.

URI is home free; teams with a non-con SoS of 3 get in as long as the rest of the resume is reasonable.  And it is.  Seeding is another issue though.  The predictive metrics hate, hate hate them.  It'll affect seeding but not selection.

Bonaventure is the tricky one to figure out.  They have a road win at Syracuse in their pocket; it's a very important piece of resume at the moment.  Their win over Maryland evaporated into very little; they also played plenty of stout mid-majors (Northeastern, Vermont, Buffalo) to make the profile look much more stouter than it is.  However, on the other hand, the committee likes teams that load up on quality mid-majors in the non-con.  For that reason, I think Bonaventure might be safe as long as they beat the teams they should.  They split with Davidson in the regular season; I'd rather see them beat them again.

Davidson's a NIT bubble team; There's actually not a lot of meat on their resume bone but might get some NIT love based on the conference name alone.  Everyone else can go boycott the CBI and CIT as they are wont to do.