The Atlantic 10 is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this season --- and ready to add to another memorable chapter to its already extensive history over the next five months.

There are four new coaches in the conference, and the nature of modern college basketball means there will be plenty of fresh faces on the court as well. But a year after seven A-10 teams enjoyed 20-win seasons and eight played in the postseason, the league has put itself in position to make an impact throughout the winter and into March.

“It wasn’t until I was asked to submit the rankings for preseason polls and all-conference selections for me to understand just how talented a league this is for this coming year and how challenging it was going to be,” Davidson coach Matt McKillop said. “The depth of the talent across the board, team by team, the high-level coaching and just the star power you see throughout the league --- it’s going to be a really exciting year in the Atlantic 10.”

Defending champion VCU, which just edged out Saint Louis for first place in the Atlantic 10’s preseason poll, figures to have an up-tempo look with new coach Phil Martelli Jr. arriving from Bryant. Martelli has never coached in the A-10, but he played for his dad --- one of the conference’s larger-than-life figures who spent more than three decades in the league as an assistant and head coach at Saint Joseph’s.

Fordham and La Salle also have new looks that have been in place since the spring. The Rams brought in Mike Magpayo, who went 89-63 with an NIT berth during a five-year run at UC Riverside. The 45-year-old is from the West Coast but does have New York City experience from his time as an assistant at Columbia.
Meanwhile, the venerable Fran Dunphy’s retirement opened up the La Salle job, and the Explorers selected the charismatic Darris Nichols to succeed him. Nichols promises a high-effort approach that emphasizes rebounding, and he arrives with a 68-63 record over four seasons at Radford.

The league had a late opening when Billy Lange left Saint Joseph’s in September to take a job with the New York Knicks. The Hawks promoted assistant coach Steve Donahue, who has spent 24 of the last 25 seasons as a head coach at Cornell, Boston College and Penn. 

There are some established stars back in the A-10. Both Saint Louis center Robbie Avila and George Washington center Rafael Castro were Second Team All-Conference picks last year, and they should be the foundations of conference contenders this season.

Castro, Loyola Chicago center Miles Rubin and Saint Joseph’s center Justice Ajogbor return from last year’s All-Defensive Team, and four members of the All-Rookie Team remain in the fold. Dayton’s Amaël L’Etang, George Washington’s Christian Jones and Dasear Haskins of Saint Joseph’s return, while Deuce Jones II followed up his rookie of the year season at La Salle by moving across town to Saint Joe’s.

Those holdovers make up the spine of the Atlantic 10’s Preseason All-Conference First Team. Avila, Castro, Jones and Rubin all earned that nod, as did Dayton guard Javon Bennett and George Mason guard Braydon O’Connor.

“You look at the talent level that’s just across the board in the league, you look at the players that are on the all-conference teams, you look at the coaches in this league, we’re in a good spot,” Loyola Chicago coach Drew Valentine said. “And I feel the same way about our team.”

Valentine has reason to; the Ramblers are a league-best 27-9 in Atlantic 10 play over the last two seasons, and after a deep NIT run are poised to push VCU and Saint Louis for the conference title. Perennial contender Dayton also fits into that group thanks to a roster that coach Anthony Grant has bolstered with particular attention paid on the defensive end.

The league’s two programs in and around the nation’s capital --- George Mason and George Washington --- are postseason threats as well. Mason’s Tony Skinn, the conference’s Coach of the Year last season after leading the Patriots to a share of their first Atlantic 10 regular season title, has proven deft with his use of the transfer portal in his first two years and has a mostly new cast around O’Connor.

George Washington made a significant leap a year ago, going from 15^th to a share of seventh place and has a strong core of Castro, Christian Jones and Trey Autry back along with a healthy Garrett Johnson. The Revolutionaries also found the transfer market fruitful and could have one of the A-10’s most potent offenses.
Not many coaches in the league have a better perspective on the A-10’s history than St. Bonaventure’s Mark Schmidt and Richmond’s Chris Mooney. Schmidt heads into his 19^th season with the Bonnies and Mooney enters his 21^st year on the Spiders’ sideline. Both have long track records and possess intriguing rosters capable of improving over last season’s finishes.

Duquesne has more continuity than most programs in the league, and the Dukes fought their way to the middle of the Atlantic 10 pack last season after a slow start. They’ll look to move up the standings, as will a retooled Rhode Island program under Archie Miller and a Davidson team that has found a way to get older --- both through its own player development and some judicious transfer additions.

The conference’s 14 teams have a fitting March destination: Pittsburgh, which played host to five of the league’s first six tournaments at the Civic Arena. The A-10 will return to the Steel City when PPG Paints Arena welcomes the event for the second time after doing those honors for Rhode Island’s title run in 2017.

It should again provide a superb platform for a conference that has made noise in the postseason throughout its history, and could very well do so again to cap its first half-century.

“This is high-level basketball,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III said. “We really have to uplift this conference because this is a really great brand of basketball and it’s been unfortunate at times that it hasn’t been looked upon with the right spotlight. It hasn’t been given enough credit for the competitiveness each and every night. We’ll go up against any league, and we’ve proven that year after year, time after time.”