2026 Atlantic 10 Tournament: Semifinals Recap

Semifinal Saturday in the Atlantic 10 Tournament is easily one of my favorite sports days of the year. With a spot in Sunday’s Championship Game on the line, A10 fans are always treated to 2 games between squads that have already played through a gauntlet of a tournament. With this year’s semifinal field occupied by the top 4 seeds, back-to-back heavyweight bouts saw the Dayton Flyers and VCU Rams advance to Sunday.

Here are the biggest moments from this year’s semifinal.

Game 11: Dayton 70, Saint Louis 69

Despite some solid ball movement from Dayton, the Flyers struggled to match 1-seed Saint Louis’ early offensive output. Amidst back-to-back threes from the Billikens’ Amari McCottry and Quentin Jones, the Flyers had a tough time breaking through SLU’s tough post defense. Despite a putback shot from Amael L’Etang and a nice drive from De’Shayne Montgomery to get the Flyers on the board, Saint Louis led 13-4 by the first media timeout.

Robbie Avila, fresh off 22 points against George Washington the day before, put Dayton’s defense to work with 7 points in the first half. After methodically backing his way to the hoop from the right side, Avila spun inside and tossed it up to put the Bills up 17-6. Despite a Jordan Derkack three to get within 17-9, McCottry hit a driving layup on the other end to keep SLU in double digits.

“I feel like we came out pretty strong,” McCottry said after the game. “That’s been a struggle for us, coming out early.”

McCottry definitely led the push to come out hot with 9 first half points. He finished the game with 16.

Down 22-15 in the final 10 minutes, Dayton’s Keonte Jones stripped Pail Otieno on a drive to the basket, sprinting in transition to take the ball the other way. With Montgomery just a few steps ahead, Jones tossed the ball forward for Montgomery to finish at the basket and put Dayton within 5. 

After Ishan Sharma drew a foul on the other end to push SLU’s lead back to 6, Derkack hit 2 consecutive layups to make it a one-bucket game. The second of these layups came from a possession kickstarted by a Dion Brown turnover. Dayton notched 13 points off 11 Saint Louis turnovers in the period. Dayton’s defense during this near 5-minute stretch of the first half was impeccable, something Flyers head coach Anthony Grant attributed to a late boost in their confidence on offense. 

“Once we were able to score, we were able to set our defense,” Grant said. “And I thought when we set our defense, we were really good in the half court.”

From the 8:45 mark of the first half to the final 2 minutes, Saint Louis scored just 6 points. With 5:52 to play, Derkack gave the Flyers their first lead, 27-25, on a 3-point jumper off another SLU turnover.

Despite the lockdown defense, Dayton could not push their lead past 2 points in the half. Robie Avila grabbed the lead back for SLU at the line, and Dion Brown hit a fastbreak layup with a second left on the clock to send the Billikens into the break up 36-33.

SLU opened the second half with a solid run to retake a double-digit lead just past the 15-minute mark. McCottry was a menace driving inside in the early minutes of the half, drawing two and-1 opportunities to help put SLU up 49-38 with 14:56 to play. 

However, Dayton’s inside presence was much better in the second half compared to the first, and now down 11, they slowly worked their way back by putting the Billikens in foul trouble.

“We put them at the line too much, and they slowed the game down,” Quentin Jones said after the game.

With 10:58 to play in the game, Dayton had entered the bonus with 4 fouls to give. Using this disparity to their advantage, Dayton broke into a 9-0 run over a 4-minute period, but they struggled to grab the game-tying bucket. Robbie Avila kept the lead just out of reach for another moment, ending the Billikens scoring drought at nearly 6 minutes with 2 free throws to go up 51-47.

After 2 free throws from Javon Bennett, Dayton trailed 51-49. At the top of the key with just over 8 minutes to play, Jordan Derkack set a screen for Bennett. Bennett took the screen, but quickly turned around and flipped the ball back to Derkack outside the arc, who drained it to give Dayton a 52-51 lead.

The final minutes of play were a mad dash, featuring one more lead for SLU before the final 30 seconds of the game. After Keonte Jones hit two free throws to bring the Flyers within 66-65, Robbie Avila was called for a 5-second violation on the inbound. However, according to Billikens head coach Josh Schertz, he was looking to call a timeout that was never seen by the officials.

“The referee, Tony came over and told me, said, hey, if you need me, I got you. I'll be looking at you. And I said okay,” Schertz recounted. “So I would see if we got it in and I was going to wait until about three, and then I would have changed the press break. So like I said, one-one thousand, two-one thousand; as I got three, I turned and started screaming time-out and I was running down the sideline. But obviously, his back was to me.”

After Dayton inbounded the ball following the turnover, Javon Bennett drove inside to try and take the lead. While McCottry rushed in just in time for the block, the ball took an aggressive bounce off the backboard to get recovered by Dayton’s Keonte Jones. Jones flicked it out to Derkack, who kicked it to his left to Jacob Conner. Conner sank it from the left corner to put Dayton up 68-65 with 11 seconds to play. On the other end, Robbie Avila, 0-6 so at that point from deep, immediately drained a three in transition to retake a 69-68 lead with 6.6 seconds to play. Avila would finish the game with 14 points and 9 rebounds.

Without calling a timeout, Dayton drove coast-to-coast with Derkack handling the ball. Derkack stutter-stepped, drove in from the right side, and threw up a high-arcing layup. Though off the mark, Amael L’Etang reached out just in time to tip the ball in, giving Dayton a 70-69 lead with 0.6 seconds remaining. SLU’s last-second heave was off the mark, allowing the Flyers to escape with the win.

“To be honest, just like, I don't know what happened,” L’Etang said after the game. “I got to watch the clip again. Like driving the ball, trying to shoot, fall the ball -- I don't really know. I just tried to do my best to put the ball back in the rim, and that worked pretty well.”

L’Etang finished the game with 7 points and 4 rebounds. Derkack led all scorers with 28 points, while McCottry led all SLU scorers with 16. With the win, Dayton advances to their first Atlantic 10 Championship since 2023. They lost that game 68-56 to VCU. Following the win, Grant was asked if he needed to refocus his team to Sunday after such a thrilling semifinal finish.

“No, our guys want to win a championship. We're good.”

As for Saint Louis, their fate now rests in the hands of the Tournament Selection Committee. At 28-5, the Billikens enter the at-large pool as one of the stronger mid-major programs in the country. 

“I told them, if we compete like that, fight like that, our physicality, everything, that was the Billiken basketball team that we've seen for most of the year,” Schertz said. “Then if we can just bring some brains to it and some soundness to it, we’ve got a chance to make a run here as we get to the tournament.”

Dayton takes on VCU in the championship game today at 1.

Game 12: VCU 77, St. Joe’s 64

Man, this VCU team is good.

After a wire-to-wire thriller in the first semifinal, the reigning A10 Tournament Champs VCU dominated a strong St. Joe’s team from tip to the final buzzer. The Hawks looked decent inside early, scoring 4 unanswered with a jumper from Derek Simpson and a layup from Austin Williford to go up 4-2 with 17:56 to play before halftime. However, that quick run was the only time they led all game. 

By the under-12 media timeout, VCU led 19-6, scored 12 unanswered points, and held the Hawks scoreless for 4 and a half minutes. This scoreless streak would extend past the timeout for another 2 minutes before Austin Williford hit a three from the left wing to make it 23-9.

“Obviously we're disappointed in our performance,” Hawks head coach Steve Donahue said after the game. “We haven't played that poorly in a long time. They had a lot to do with it, but we're just still disappointed in how we played, and really feel we could have given it a lot better effort.”

The Hawks were smothered in the first half, shooting 9-34 in the period, 2-12 from three. VCU recorded 5 steals 7 points off 6 Hawks turnovers before halftime. 

While those shooting splits indicate a down day for the Hawks offense, VCU’s fantastic shooting performance in their own right helped the Rams take a 23-point lead into halftime. Jadrian Tracey led all scorers at the break with 15 points off 3-5 shooting from deep. Rams freshman Nyk Lewis hit an impressive three from the right corner on a kickout from Brandon Jennings to put VCU up 10-6. The shot most emblematic of VCU’s dominance, however, came from Terrence Hill Jr. up 20-6 with 10:05 to play, Hill casually hit a three-pointer from within the “50” of the “A10 50” logo adorning center court. 

Below is a diagram to help illustrate the distance of that shot:

Hill finished as the game’s leading scorer with 18 points. 

In the second half, the Hawks looked much more composed on both sides of the ball, but could not get the deficit within 15 until the final 3 minutes of the game. Ending the game on a 7-0 Hawks run, VCU closed out a 13-point semifinal win. Despite a deflating loss, Steve Donahue reflected warmly on how his team earned the 3-seed after a sudden leadership change to start the year. 

“I don't think there's a more gratifying season in so many different ways for me personally,” Donahue said. “I've been fortunate to win championships and make deep runs in the NCAA tournament, but when you do this, you really judge it on what your group is, where it's at, and where can you get it? What these guys did, and [how they] put all the stuff, all the adversity, all the distractions and drama that was around the program for a couple of months there [behind them]; and just buy into what we were telling them each and every day [is special].”

The Hawks leave the A10 Tournament 22-10, their third straight season with at least 20 wins.

For the Rams, they are now headed to their fourth consecutive Atlantic 10 Championship game, in pursuit of 3 titles in 4 years. In his first year at the program, Rams head coach Phil Martelli Jr. talked about maintaining that stretch of dominance through coaching changes, as well as what it means to face a fellow conference staple, Dayton, in the Championship game.

“All due respect to everybody, these are the two flagship programs, right?” Martelli asked the press after the game. “You expect to see at least Dayton or VCU in the championship game every year. It just seems like it every year. We happen to be meeting against each other.”

VCU takes on Dayton in the title game at 1.