The Rebuilding of the A-10

Was it really so long ago that the A-10, not the Missouri Valley Conference, was considered the best of the rest in basketball? Temple, UMass, Xavier, St. Joe's and even St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island made it seem like a conference that was serious about asserting its presence nationally and in the NCAA Tournament. Then, it all fell apart. It wasn't overnight, but it seems that way now.

St. Bonaventure was decimated by academic scandals that included trying to slip a kid in with a certificate in welding. Rhode Island payed a steep price for bringing in Jim Harrick. UMass had delayed penalties from Marcus Camby and the John Calipari time. Temple slipped in the final years of John Chaney. St. Joe's reached its peak in 2003, but has had to work back up from there.

Lately the conference has been lucky to get two bids to the NCAA Tournament. Only Xavier has remained consistent in this group and George Washington has built itself into a power in the conference.

If the conference is going to have another surge, the last three years will be the ones in which the foundation was laid with the coaches that are in the conference.

• UMass hired Travis Ford, who has quickly put the Minutemen up near the top of the A-10 and was rewarded with a new 5-year extension this week.

• John Chaney retired last year, and Temple hired Fran Dunphy from Penn to rebuild the program.

• Karl Hobbs at George Washington has remained, as has Phil Martelli at St. Joe's to keep the programs in good shape.

• Xavier made the relatively smooth transition from Thad Motta to Sean Miller who just signed a new extension.

• Rhode Island hired Jim Baron away from St. Bonaventure several years ago and he has quietly dug them out of the Harrick mess into a quality program.

• Even Duquesne seems to be making an effort to improve with last year's hiring of Ron Everhart from Northeastern.

• Now, even St. Bonaventure is trying to get something back, by hiring Mark Schmidt from Robert Morris, where he had done solid work building up an NEC bottom-feeder.

That's not to say that all of these hirings will work or that several won't leave for bigger programs. It's that the overall quality of coaches and recruiters in the A-10 may be getting to one of its highest levels in a decade.