Here we are in year 2 or 3 of the NIL/Transfer Portal era, and we can already see how some programs are digging in deep on attracting players from other schools/lower conferences while other programs (happily, ours) is going for a combination of four-year talent development and finding the right pieces.

I don't expect teams that look to attract exceptional talent for a 1-and-done deal to do that well. It's a real hit-and-miss proposition with a big locker room poison downside to it. Anyone who watched how transfers worked out in the pre-open transfer era knows that-- compare high-profile transfers like Clayton Custer at Loyola and Malik Yarbrough at Illinois State. Since that meeting in the Arch Madness Final in 2018, ISU had never had a conference season over .500.

I think in the early days of the Coach Valentine era, Loyola signed a few players with massive athletic upsides but shaky character/emotional maturity red flags. I think once the stability of the players from the Final Four team was gone, the great athletes with some issues did damage to team cohesiveness. This is just a theory developed from watching chemistry, not inside information.

Which leads me to my MOST OVERRATED selection for this season. It's not the highly-ranked team with a new coach and a bunch of new players from a highly-rated team. It's the team with the second-year coach who only has a handful of returning players, but backfilled his roster with 1-and-dones and highly-talented but jittery players. I speak of George Mason.

Last year Mason played great defense in Tony Skinn's first season, and had highly-talented players that streaked out to a 13-2 overall and 2-0 start to conference play. As far as I can tell, only four players remain from last year's roster, and one was a freshman last season. There's also not a lot of big man experience. Yet in Bart Torvik's pre-season A-10 rankings, George Mason is ranked 85th nationally, ahead of Loyola at 91.

I think VCU, Dayton, and St. Joe's are ranked legitimately ahead of Loyola at 53, 69, and 81 in Torvik's pre-season rankings. Sounds legit to me, even though I think Loyola has more versatility to overcome major injuries than those teams due to impressive depth at several positions and an overall defense-first mentality. St. Louis, with new head coach Josh Schertz, center Robbie Avila, and point guard Isaiah Swope-- all from Indiana State-- joining returnees Gibson Jimerson and Larry Hughes II is picked to finish just a notch behind Loyola, and I think that's right.

If there's a team I think could surprise, it's Rhode Island. The Rams were not a good team last year, but they put together some excellent stretches for short spurts, and the core of that squad is back with more experience. Coach Archie Miller might be feeling some heat after a 5-win and 6-win seasons in his return to the A-10. He's had solid BBIQ players his first two years, but he could use a stellar athlete to stretch defenses-- 3-1/2 star 6'6" small forward Tyonne Ferrell might be that guy.

Also, Davidson is too good a program with too good a recruiting pipeline to stay at the bottom of the league....

Who are you interested in this year in the A-10.... Let's get a conversation started!!

Im quite interested to see if the SLU experiment works with immediate success, if it does I could see many programs trying to buy a coach and his roster from lesser leagues in the future.

Somewhat off topic for the thread, but was anyone at the open practice today? If so, any observations to share? Starving for some news!

I was there. I posted in Open Scrimmage topic.