BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The Atlantic 10 hosted its men’s basketball media day at Barclays Center on Tuesday afternoon. Coaches and players gathered to share their expectations for their teams and their thoughts from around the conference.
Representing UMass was head coach Frank Martin was in attendance with senior forward and preseason All-Conference Third Team selection Matt Cross.
The two biggest questions surrounding the A-10 in the offseason were the two questions that seemingly every coach had the opportunity to answer on Tuesday: Can the conference return to a multi-bid league? And what is the A-10’s place in the transfer portal?
Martin had an answer for both, and the second-year Minutemen head coach was very honest when talking about his opinion of the Atlantic 10 returning to its state of several teams making the NCAA Tournament.
“I have more of a concern when you have a school like VCU, who wins 27 games, wins the regular season, wins the conference tournament, and they go in as a 12-seed,” Martin said of last year’s Rams. “That’s a big problem. If we’re gonna get more teams in, then the best team in our league has to have more credibility than that. So we gotta figure that one out. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but bottom line is we have to schedule more quad-one games and we can’t lose bad games as a league collectively.”
Here are some takeaways from other Atlantic-10 teams at media day.
The Rams begin their Atlantic 10 title defense with a new man in charge, as Ryan Odom comes back to the east coast to take over as head coach. Odom previously coached at Utah State, but many know him from his stint at UMBC when his team became the first ever No. 16 seed to defeat a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament in 2018.
VCU lost a load of talent to the transfer portal from last year’s 27-win team. But Odom brought in three players (including Max Shulga and Sean Bairstow, who both made Preseason All-Conference teams) from Utah State, and the Rams do return a handful of guys that played a part in their conference tournament run a season ago – headlined by Zeb Jackson, one of the key parts of VCU’s second-ranked defense in the A-10.
Maintaining continuity – and bringing in guys he’s familiar with – was vital for the first-year coach.
“They had a special year last year,” Odom said. “I thought it was huge for us to keep not only Zeb, but several of his other teammates from that team. Zeb played more than some of the others, but the others are young and have extremely bright futures for us.”
Once again the Flyers were picked to finish first in the Atlantic 10, receiving 20 of the 25 first-place votes to run away with the preseason poll. Dayton isn’t in unfamiliar territory considering it has now been atop the A-10 preseason poll for the second consecutive year.
Head coach Anthony Grant doesn’t care for predictions or what spot people think his team will finish in, even if it’s first place.
“What’s my opinion of everybody’s opinion? I don’t put a lot of stock in it,” Grant said. “Our guys understand that we have certain standards and expectations at Dayton, and we try to do everything we can that we’re preparing ourselves as best we can to try and meet those expectations.”
The Flyers bring back four of five starters and are led by Preseason All-Conference First Team member DaRon Holmes II, a 6-foot-10 junior forward who tallied 18.4 points and 8.1 rebounds per game. Dayton is likely to make it deep into the conference tournament once again, this time hoping for a better result considering the Flyers were left out of the NCAA Tournament.
One of the better stories from the 2022-23 season was the rise of Keith Urgo’s Fordham Rams. Urgo coached his team to a 25-8 record – including 18-2 at home – to help earn him the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year award.
Fordham was fantastic in the regular season, and the Rams were one of the few teams throughout the nation that lost zero players to the transfer portal in the offseason. In fact, Fordham graduated three players (most notably Darius Quisenberry and his 17 points per game), but Urgo landed three transfers to replace them – headlined by former Texas-San Antonio guard Japhet Medor who averaged 13.7 points and 3.8 assists per game.
Keeping all possible players from last season and mixing in some new talented faces should bode well for Urgo and the Rams.
“We have a really good staff that develops honest relationships with our players, so for us [the transfer portal] didn’t affect us as much,” Urgo said. “We did bring in three transfers… It’s an interesting time in college basketball. It’s not changing, so you gotta jump on board and figure out what makes sense for you.”
There’s no question the Patriots have the coaching story of the year in the conference. Tony Skinn returns to his alma mater to lead the charge as head coach for George Mason following a strong 20-13 record last year (11-7 in the conference). He replaces Kim English, who took the job at Providence.
Skinn played at George Mason from 2003-2006, and played a pivotal role on the Patriots team that danced into the Final Four as an 11-seed in 2006. He averaged 12.6 points and 3.5 rebounds per game his senior season playing under legendary head coach Jim Larranaga.
Now in his first ever head-coaching gig, Skinn, who was an assistant at Maryland last year, is looking to bring George Mason back to the glory days it experienced while he was a player – and he plans to use what he learned from Larranaga in the process.
“We did something special back in ‘06, and it’s really laid the foundation for me to have this opportunity,” Skinn said. “And that same foundation is, for the most part, the same thing that I wanna try to teach as much as possible to these guys… [Larranaga] was a different type of teacher than I’ve ever had. There was a certain buy-in that I had to give him… When I see it now full circle as a coach, some of those things that I didn’t always agree with, I’ve taken that on as a coach.”
