A-10 exhibition’s heat up this week

Tough to say we’ll have a better idea of this year’s Atlantic 10 with the level of competition conference squads are about to go up against in this year’s exhibition schedule, but we’ll at least get to quench our seven-month thirst for college hoops.

A few teams put in work overseas this summer but the rubber will hit the road for the conference as a whole starting this week as the exhibition season gets underway. Below is the schedule of A-10 exhibitions scheduled this season.

Davidson – Nov 11, 7PM v Lenoir-Rhyne
Dayton – Nov 8, 7PM v Southern Indiana
Duquesne – Nov 7, 7PM v Shippensburg
Fordham – none
George Mason – Nov 8, 4PM v Shenandoah
George Washington – Nov 8, 2PM v Bloomsburg
La Salle – Nov 10, 7PM v Philadelphia University
UMass – Oct 30 v American International, 120-71 W
Rhode Island – none
Richmond – none
St. Bonaventure – Nov 8, 4PM v Mansfield
Saint Joseph’s – none
Saint Louis – Nov 4, 7PM v Harris-Stowe
VCU – Nov 7, 7PM v Cal U (PA)

UMass tipped things up for the conference this past Thursday in a blowout of DII AIC that saw the Minutemen shake the rust off their uptempo attack against an outmatched Yellow Jackets team (with a great recap of that one by MassLive’s Daniel Malone here). To sum that up for you: UMass did what they needed to do against a bad team, WVU transfer Jabarie Hinds looked good as a spark off the bench, the Minutemen youth movement put up big numbers and Zach Coleman injured his knee.

Fordham may not have an exhibition scheduled but they do have a number of boxscores available from this August against Canadian competition (click here). My Canadian college hoops knowledge is non-existent so I’ll just say the Rams blew out two teams (avg margin of victory of 22.5) and just slid past two teams (avg margin 6.5). I’ll throw out an educated guess and say: I’d be worried if I were a Fordham fan based off those close wins over the likes of Laval and McGill.