First, a moment of silence in memory of Barry Morse, the actor whose roles including Lt. Gerard, who relentlessly pursued David Janssen on The Fugitive.

 OK, now to basketball.

The A-10 is so tightly packed that we’re still at a point where every game has some impact on the league race. Though with everyone so tightly packed — the gap from fourth to 11th is 1 1/2 games — no loss is fatal.

Charlotte at Dayton: Probably the best of the bunch. Charlotte is coming off a bad loss at home to Richmond and with a win would remain in the top tier of the league. Dayton has lost four of its past five, and has gotten Charles Little back. But the team certainly isn’t clicking the way it used to. A loss here would send it deeper in the pack and cast more trouble on its at-large hopes. (Dayton’s RPI remains excellent, but the losses are starting to add up.) A Dayton win would pull the middle closer together.

St. Joe’s at Duquesne: Duquesne’s at-large hopes went out the window with its loss to St. Bonaventure last weekend. (I dare say any loss to St. Bonaventure hurts anybody’s chances.) The Dukes are struggling and need to get winning again. St. Joe’s helped its at-large hopes with a win over Villanova on Monday. Their RPI is 45, and with one or two road wins, they can get that number into a good spot. (And the Hawks still have to play at Dayton, Xavier and Rhody.) St. Joe’s is 8-3 on the road, which has got to be one of the better numbers around. Temple is the only other team in the league even above .500 on the road. Though I should add St. Joe’s plays a bunch of road games in Philly, which makes them seem less like road games.

Temple at Richmond: Temple is tied for fourth in the league, though I’m not yet sold on them. Richmond is sixth, and I’m even less sold on them, though wins over Dayton and Charlotte pretty much command your attention. (Though they lost to La Salle once and needed three overtimes to beat them another time. What’s up with that?) This is another case where the winner will get some separation, while the loser will be thrown into the eddy in the middle of the league.

La Salle at George Washington: Could be the battle for 12th place and the final spot in the conference tournament. La Salle has its toughest games down the stretch, so they need a win here because there aren’t many more down the line. George Washington needs a win anywhere. GW is 5-2 at home, La Salle is 3-5 on the road.

Then on Thursday, there’s Rhode Island at UMass in a game the Minutemen need to climb back into the race. That should be a high-scoring game, with the final in the 90s.

And, of course, Xavier at SLU. After this, SLU has five of its final eight games on the road, and the road has not been good to SLU. Still, those final home games, GW, Fordham and St. Bonaventure, all look winnable.

The other day, I wondered about the last time SLU had beaten two teams in the top 25 of the RPI in the same season. I don’t know if we’ll find that out, but I can tell you that SLU beat two teams in the top 25 of the rankings in 2000, when they beat Cincinnati in Memphis and DePaul in Chicago, though I’d be surprised if DePaul’s RPI was in the top 25 at the time. Prior to that, in 1998-99, SLU beat Cincinnati and Kansas when both were in the top 25.