A few weeks ago, the Atlantic 10 announced that Loyola-Chicago would be coming to the A10 starting in the fall 2022-23 athletic season. This would make the Ramblers the 15th team in the conference.
It’s an oddball number for a conference that cannot do round robin scheduling. Not that they would want to, but the 18 game schedule of playing 5 teams twice is weird and not competitively equal to everyone in the conference.
I just don’t see how having the currently 18 game schedule benefits the conference. The idea, at the time at least, was to give the teams that have a shot to get an NCAA tournament bid 5 games against the better teams in the conference to improve those teams’ tournament resumes come Selection Sunday.
Has it been like that? Well let’s think. Dayton is one of the top teams in the conference year in and year out. Their normal 5 additional games are Saint Louis, VCU, Rhode Island, Duquesne, and then a random team, but the past two years it has been George Washington...
