Who’s best all-around in the A-10
With the completion of the baseball regular season, the Atlantic 10 sports season is done except for the NCAAs. So which school has the best all-around program?
Well, it depends which method you use to figure it out, but it’s either UMass or Charlotte.
UMass prevails if you assign points for every sport you field a team for an add them up. This method rewards schools that field a lot of sports — SLU gets points for field hockey, for instance, and seventh-place points at that because there are only seven schools that play. But to a certain extent, the effort seems to me to be worth something, that you’re trying to play a sport and investing resources in it, even if you’re not necessarily very good. UMass finished first in the league in men’s cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, rowing (those last three are sports with limited participation), men’s soccer, softball and men’s swimming. UMass fields a team in every A-10 sport but men’s tennis, volleyball and golf. Only three schools, Temple, Fordham and La Salle have more sports.
If you take a team’s average finish in league play, the winner is Charlotte. The 49ers field teams in just 16 sports — only St. Bonaventure, at 13, has less — and finished first in women’s soccer, men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and golf. They’re numbers are obviously bolstered by track, and you could certainly make the case that if there were multiple competitions in other sports — say, if there was indoor and outdoor basketball — that a school like Xavier would have finished higher. And I could not say you would be wrong, especially since there was a very strong correlation between how you did in indoor track and how you did in outdoor track.
Where does SLU fit in? If you go by total points, SLU is eighth, essentially right in the middle. There was a fair-sized gap between them and the schools tied for sixth, Xavier and Duquesne, but they beat out ninth-place Rhode Island by just a point. (Full standings are below.) If you go by average finish, SLU flips places with Rhode Island (which fields one fewer program.) SLU’s average finish was 7th.
For those people obsessed with methodology, I went by the final standings in each sport and didn’t break ties. So in men’s basketball, for instance, Dayton and Rhode Island were both considered to have finished second. In sports with championships, such as cross country, I went by those results. In volleyball, the only sport with two divisions, I took the regular-season division standings and had to make judgment calls as I merged them together, but considering the standings and the differences in the divisions, I think the results were pretty accurate.
Here are the two sets of standings:
By total points:
1. UMass 188
2. Charlotte 184
3. Temple 183
4. Richmond 177
5. Dayton 156
6t. Xavier 153
6t. Duquesne 153
8. SLU 144
9. Rhode Island 143
10t. St. Joseph’s 137
10t. Fordham 137
12. La Salle 129
13. George Washington 119
14. St. Bonaventure 100
By average finish:
1. Charlotte 3.5
2. Dayton 4.25
3. Richmond 4.58
4. UMass 4.8
5. Temple 5.36
6. Xavier 6
7. Duquesne 6.5
8. Rhode Island 6.58
9. SLU 7
10. St. Bonaventure 7.3
11. St. Joseph’s 7.5
12. GW 7.56
13. Fordham 7.78
14. La Salle 8.55
Note: La Salle fields a league-high 20 programs, with everything except women’s tennis. Fordham is next with everything but field hockey and lacrosse. St. Bonaventure has the fewest with only 13 programs.
By conference titles won (in most team sports, this reflects regular-season titles, not postseason tournament titles):
UMass: 7 (men’s cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, rowing, men’s soccer, softball, men’s swimming)
Charlotte: 6 (women’s soccer, men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track, golf)
Xavier: 3 (men’s and women’s basketball, men’s tennis)
Richmond: 3 (women’s cross country, women’s swimming, women’s tennis)
Dayton: 1 (baseball)
SLU: 1 (volleyball)
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Six degrees of Rick Majerus:
Former Billiken Drew Diener is the new coach at Cardinal Stritch in suburban Milwaukee, near where he grew up in Fond Du Lac, Wisc, and where there are an estimated 2.3 million basketball-playing Dieners. For years, Rick Majerus has had a summer basketball camp at Cardinal Stritch. We could also add that Drew’s cousin, Rachel, is Majerus’ administrative assistant. But you already knew that.


According to the U.S. Census Bureau 57,479 people live in Fond Du Lac, a ways off from the 2.3 million Dieners you estimated live in the area. Nice research.