3MW’s All Conference Team:
Player of the Year: Nah'Shon ‘Bones’ Hyland, So., VCU
Coach of the Year: Mark Schmidt, St. Bonaventure
Newcomer of the Year: Jalen Adaway, R Jr., St. Bonaventure
Freshman of the Year: Mustapha Amzil, Dayton
*Tre Mitchell missing two conference games, coupled with the watered-down, imbalanced schedule the Minutemen faced, dropped him to 2nd team
**Chad Baker (Duquesne) and Tyler Kolek (George Mason) just missed the cut as the first two out from the freshmen batch. Amzil got the nod because of the timely impact he made for a Dayton team rail thin on bodies.
Season Storylines:
Sweet, sweet vindication. I tried to warn the A-10 universe that the St. Bonaventure wrecking ball was coming. This was not some Nostradamus caliber prediction, folks. This was simply reading the writing was on the wall…
Mark Schmidt… seasoned talent… good things are coming…
All I had to do was regurgitate what the crystal ball told me and, voilà! Sure, the Bonnies were benefactors of COVID-19 spreading like wildfire throughout the league, which derailed Saint Louis and Richmond’s electric starts, but all Mark Schmidt could do was play the hand he was dealt. And like Mikey McDermott suckering Teddy KGB, Schmidt made the rest of the A-10 roundtable look like squares.
The Bonnies weren’t the only unsuspecting riser. Prognosticators and fans alike assumed VCU would treat 2021 as a transition period, discounting a robust crop of underclassmen class led by Bones Hyland. Welp, those young guns blossomed a year ahead of schedule. Buoyed by a vintage, havoc-laden Mike Rhoades defense, the Rams raced to the top of the A-10 totem pole, finishing a half game back of the Bonnies in the final standings. Despite missing the last two games of the regular season, Bones compiled a Player of the Year worthy resume, posting eye-popping counting and efficiency stats: 20 PPG / 6 RPG / 3 APG / 2 SPG while maintaining a true shooting percentage of 59.4%.
Dayton’s 2021 encore only exacerbated the residual frustration of the 2020 COVID cancellation. Flyer fans endured a painful year of injuries, leaving Jalen Crutcher little help to pick up the pieces. Though, optimism for an A-10 tournament run lingers with the recent return of Rodney Chatman, who missed 11 games in the heart of conference play. Despite closing out the regular season on a high note with an impressive over the Bonnies, the Flyers still sit below George Mason and UMass in the official standings heading into the tournament thanks to rampant inequity in the imbalanced schedules.
This year’s A-10 tournament will serve as a battleground for four bubble boys, St. Bonnies, VCU, SLU and Richmond - though, the itsy bitsy Spiders may not be deserving of that label after a gut-wrenching home loss to Saint Joseph’s on Monday. Meanwhile, Hawk Hill is left to ponder what could’ve been had Ryan Daly (and others) been healthy all year…
Tournament Preview
Tournament Predictions
(11) George Washington over (14) Fordham
(13) Saint Joseph’s over (12) La Salle
(8) Richmond over (9) Duquesne
(13) Saint Joseph’s over (5) Massachusetts
(7) Dayton over (4) Rhode Island
(6) George Mason over (11) George Washington
(1) St. Bonaventure over (8) Richmond
(4) Saint Louis over (13) Saint Joseph’s
(7) Dayton over (2) VCU
(3) Davidson over (6) George Mason
(4) Saint Louis over (1) St. Bonaventure
(7) Dayton over (3) Davidson
(4) Saint Louis over (7) Dayton (the whole world is rooting for the Arch Baron battle, Round 3)