Time to take a gander at the various college basketball yearbooks and see what their respective crystal balls have to say about the A-10 and the Flyers. I would like to thank Barnes & Noble out by Dayton Mall for allowing me to loiter in their periodicals section (in those comfortable chairs!) for extended periods of time and to take notes while I was in town on biz, as opposed to shelling-out up to $6.99 for one of these rags.

Athlon ($5.99)
There is something to be said for being first, which Athlon always is — first to hit the newsstands. There is also an advantage to waiting (like Blue Ribbon does) so that you are sure that recruits qualify, coaches stay put and nobody claims they got abducted to Texas. A good example is the Doug Scott/Frank Iguadola situation: you can tell if a mag went to press early if they still have Monty on the roster, which Athlon does. Athlon has UD and UMass in the NIT, with Temple and X in the Big Dance. The Atlantic 10 just doesn’t get any respect: the A-10 is ranked as the #9 conference. Athlon gives each team in conferences 1-8 the full-page treatment; after that, teams share a page. The eight also-rans in the A-10 conference are all jammed on one page, X and Temple get a whole page each; UMass and UD split one.

Lindy’s ($5.99)
First of all, the guys at Lindy’s have X making it all the way to the Final Four, which immediately aroused my suspicions. They then proceeded to pick UD to make the Field of 64 with X — hey maybe these guys aren’t so freakin’ stupid after all! Lindy’s actually put some thought into their profiles: they created a chart with 4-year cumulative conference rankings, in which UD (75-50 overall, 50-25 A-10) was #3 behind Temple and X . OP is touted as the “best teacher.” Here’s a telling quote: “The only team truly capable of getting in the way (of X) is Dayton.” And another: “If Brooks Hall has the best year of his career, he could get some All-America Honorable Mentions.” Their choice for the Flyer to “Keep an Eye on”: Sean Finn. My only complaint is that there are way too many advertisements for betting sites. Overall, Lindy’s put together a much better product than they have in the past.

The Sporting News ($6.99)
TSN has UD ranked #54, X at #5, but they see X and Temple (#46) making the NCAAs and not the Flyers. KW is ranked as the #19 center, which is interesting since he’s obviously not starting for OP in the pivot. UD’s recruiting class is ranked 2nd in the A-10, behind UMass and ahead of Xavier, which is sure to piss off Smell the Glove. They have Iggy listed and not Monty, so they waited longer than Athlon to publish. TSN also has a small feature entitled “Biggest Sneakers to Fill” which for the A-10 was Lynn Greer of Temple, Bill Phillips of St. Joe’s and David Morris. Of Day-Day they said “Morris wasn’t the league’s best PG, but he was steady and productive. Now it’s up to sophomore Mark Jones or 1 of 2 freshman — Warren Williams or Logan White — to take the reins of a team that is capable of good things.”

Basketball News ($4.99)
As I noted in a previous FTS, The Basketball News College Hoops Yearbook has someone named “Raymond” Marshall (#20 “Gunner”) and Brooks Hall (#15 “Slasher”) ranked in the top 20 in the country at their positions. However, they see the Flyers finishing 3rd in the A-10 West behind X (with West a 1st team All-American and Sato) and Richmond (who had nobody in the top 20 at any position) and just ahead of Duquesne and GW, which is not going to please Colonial fans. It’s basically three teams to a page and they have Iggy listed and not DS, so they were good boys and waited.

Street & Smith ($6.99)
Deep in the recesses of my basement, down where my 16 year-old daughter fears to tread, is a collection of Street & Smith’s College Basketball Yearbooks dating back to 1973…except for last year. It just doesn’t make sense to me anymore to shell out good money for something you know is obsolete the minute you pick it up — that’s the price publishers pay for living in the Internet age. S&S does their major conference previews alphabetically, so the A-10 up front, right after the ACC. They refer to X as a “Beast in the East.” Brooks Hall is named 1st Team All A-10. UD’s newcomers are ranked 4th, after X, Temple and UMass. They went to press earlier this year, because they have Monty on the roster and not Iggy.

USA Today ($.50)
Okay, it ain’t a magazine, but they just came out with their College Hoops Preview section last Friday. Pretty skimpy stuff: UD is one of the 4 “best teams” in the A-10, which earns the Flyers a whole one sentence profile: “Dayton has won 20 games the last 3 seasons and hosts the post-season conference tournament in March.” Jeff Sagarin released his initial ratings and UD is #52. USA Today had a complete listing of all televised college basketball games and it appears that only the Final of the A-10 Tournament will be on ESPN this year.

Don’t expect to see any of the above publications online anytime soon…if they did, why on earth would you buy the magazine? One exception is Blue Ribbon, which is actually the pick of the litter. They provide in-depth profiles to my alma mater, CNNSI.com. Here’s a link to their (excellent and rather lengthy) analysis:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/college/2003/preview/dayton/

You would think the self-proclaimed leader in sports coverage would be the one to provide the Blue Ribbon content, but no. Instead,

ESPN.com had Greg Doyel craft this rather piss-poor A-10 preview:
We found something that will make you laugh, something written about Atlantic 10 basketball as it entered last season with big talk and bigger expectations:

“The Atlantic 10 may have drawn even with the Big East for northeast supremacy.”

It wasn’t hard to find, because alas, we wrote it on Nov. 24, 2001.

Our bad.

After spending the past few years creeping ever closer to Big (East) Brother, the Atlantic 10 this season creeps back down the college basketball family tree. The A-10 once was thought to be approaching equal footing with the Big East, a younger sibling who is all grown up, but this season the A-10 will be more like that league’s third cousin — related, but once (again) removed from the national scene.

“A lot of teams are going through transitions,” says George Washington guard Chris Monroe, a preseason all-league pick. “Other than Xavier, the rest of the league is open for someone to step up.”

Or down.

I understand that Greg Doyel is in the running for Official Atlantic 10 Proctologist. Hey, I’ll give him credit for one thing: Doyel had the huevos to jump on the A-10 bandwagon a scant 12 months ago — a gutsy move at the time — and he jumped his butt right off just as quickly…don’t hurt yourself on the way down, Greg.

Doyel’s UD preview isn’t much better: http://espn.go.com/ncb/2002/dayton.html

Dan Wetzel and CBS Sportsline provide previews of the A-10 and the Flyers, but you’ll have to click thru to get to them — in their own inimitable way, AOL won’t let you create a link to them:

http://www.sportsline.com/u/partners/aol/index.html?http://cbs.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/

BTW Sportsline, is there any reason for the preview on a website to have Doug Scott listed as a possible contributor for the Flyers when he was declared ineligible several months ago?

There you have it…a trip thru the old magazine rack and a few websites, to boot. I just saved you (and more importantly, myself) $31.45! Of course, once they toss the ball up for real on November 24th against Delaware State, all this stuff goes out the window. The so-called ‘experts’ can prognosticate all they want, but in the end all of their guesswork doesn’t mean squat…you still gotta play the games!