Week #2 - Games of Interest

[ace]

Duquesne is crushing Penn State, and Rider is leading Maryland by 14.

You almost killed me a week ago, college basketball, but you're pretty great overall.

[twisted3829]

Maryland has tied it

Duquesne is killing Penn State

[PeterRamTime]

Maryland isn't quite as good as they should be yet. Might have a better chance against them than I thought.
Our bottom dwellers are kickin butt today!

[twisted3829]

Maryland beat Rider
Duquesne beat Penn State by 26
VCU in a tight game against Duke

[RF1]

The A-10 is 6-2 vs the Power-5 thus far in the early going:

GW over Virginia
Dayton over Alabama
Richmond over Wake Forest
George Mason over Mississippi
George Mason over Oklahoma State
Duquesne over Penn State

Syracuse over SBU
Duke over VCU


The A-10 is also 2-0 vs the AAC, one of the leagues just outside the P-5 that it is sometimes compared to. No A-10 teams have yet played teams from other similar type leagues such as the Big East or MWC (curiously the A-10 has no games scheduled this season).

Davidson over UCF
GW over USF

[Obadiah]

Lots of Saturday games already underway:

In the A-10:

In completed action, Davidson come from behind to edge Charleston, 82-81

Dayton behind much of the first half at home versus William & Mary has cut the lead to 4 with 12 minutes left in game..

Fairleigh Dickinson at Fordham and the Bronx Rams lead 48-35 in second half..

At halftime, Florida leads St. Joseph's 34-33 at the half

Richmond entertains Bethune-Cookman. 6 PM. Part of the Las Vegas Invitational.

Loyola (MD) at St. Bonaventure. 7 PM

Cleveland State at URI. 7:30 PM.

St. Francis (NY) at Saint Louis. 8 PM. Part of the Brooklyn Hoops Classic.


In OOC action:

South Dakota State killing TCU early in second half, 56-39.

Brown at Providence. 7 PM

American at St. Francis (PA). 7 PM

Houston Baptist at Illinois State. 7 PM. Part of the Cancun Challenge.

Florida A&M at Houston. 8 PM. On ESPN3

[ramster]

North Carolina loses to Northern Iowa in a shocker could move our potential opponent Maryland at least to #2

[ace]

In a match-up of future opponents, St. Joe's plays Old Dominion today.

[ace]

In a match-up of future opponents, St. Joe's plays Old Dominion today.

ODU leads by 1 at the half, 31-30.

Bembry did not start today, reportedly because he was late to a film session.

[RF1]

St. Joe's beats ODU 66-64 at Mohegan Sun. The A-10 is now 34-8 to start the season.

[ATPTourFan]

Phew. Needed Joe's to win that one.

At the moment, the A10 is the 3rd best conference in RPI.

http://www.rpiforecast.com/live-conf-rpi.html

A great Season Capsule for the A10 which shows results by conference grouping.

http://bbstate.com/conferences/A-10/capsule

[Obadiah]

In Sunday action in the A-10:

In completed action, St. Joseph's defeats Old Dominion, 66-64, in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off. Bembry comes off the bench to score 15 points.

Wisconsin versus VCU in the 2K Classic at MSG. 3:30PM. On ESPN2

Army at GW. Campus site round in the Barclays Center Classic. 7:30 PM.

Surprising George Mason U. meets #6 Virginia in the Charleston Classic championship game. At 9:30 PM. On ESPN2.


In OOC action:

In action underway, Holy Cross is at Quinnipiac and leads in the second half, 42-37 with 11 minutes left.

4-0 Valparaiso visits Oregon. 6 PM. On PAC12.

Nebraska hosts Southeast Louisiana in another campus round game in the Barclays Center Classic. 7 PM. On BTN

[ramster]

Valpo plays 25th ranked Oregon at Oregon respecively losing 73-67. Former URI Recruiting Target Dillon Brooks, now a Soph gets 26 points and 13 rebounds in a strong performance for

VCU loses a heartbreaker by 1 point to Wisconsin

[rjsuperfly66]

A10 has been AWESOME to start the year.

Next few weeks can start the make or break stretch for many conferences with the bigger tournaments beginning.

[ATPTourFan]

As of now, LIVE-RPI.com has the following conference rankings through games yesterday.

#1 PAC12
#2 Big East
#3 Atlantic 10 #3

Of course, we are forecasted to finish in a familiar and good spot, alongside our pals in the Big East.

Forecasted Season-Ending Conference RPI:
#1 ACC
#2 Big 12
#3 PAC 12
#4 SEC
#5 Big 10
#6 Big East
#7 A10
#8 American
#9 Mountain West
#10 Summit

[rjsuperfly66]

The A10 just has to hope it doesn't fall into the 2013-2014 Big East trap where there are one or two good teams, and a lot of decent teams. Right now if you look at RPI Forecast (and again it's early, but play along), Dayton projects to be a tourney lock, URI projects to be a solid bubble team, and GW, VCU, and Davidson project to be stronger NIT teams/fringe bubble teams, with St. Joe's, UMASS, Duquesne, St. Louis, and LaSalle all potentially in the "NIT zone." In the 2014 Big East season, many of the decent teams beat up on each other, lot of teams around .500 in conference. GW beats VCU, but loses to Davidson, who loses to VCU. No one moves up, no one moves down. Just something worth noting, but again, it's an important week for many conferences and things can change drastically. By December 8th, should be able to gauge everything better, since most teams will have gone through the heart of their OOC.

[PeterRamTime]

I think with the Virginia win GW is lookin maybe the most like a lock for a bid from the A-10.

[rjsuperfly66]

I think the thing with GW is figuring out if Virginia was just an outlier or not. The beat Lafayette by 9 (final score was deceiving), South Florida by 6 (close game down the wire), and Army by 11 (game was within 7 with 2:30 left, Army couldn't get a stop). They have their marquee win for the year, just a matter of whether it was a blip or if they are legit. Tough to tell given their schedule up until their game with Dayton on January 15th. They really need that matchup with Cincy at Barclays.