In the fall of 1998, the Atlantic 10 was on basketball's Hot List. It had five teams in the preseason Top 25 and had sent five to the NCAA Tournament the previous two years.

        This season, current projections have only Xavier making the NCAA field, and as a middling No.8 seed (by both ESPN.com and collegeRPI.com). Which begs the question: Has the league slipped a bit?

        “We hit that high spot of five (NCAA) teams a few years back, and now we've slid a little bit,” Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said. “There were all the coaching changes this year (seven, plus Richmond joining the A-10). Everybody knew this would be a learning process for the league.”

        In the Ratings Percentage Index, the A-10 is the ninth-rated conference. That's where it ranked each of the last two seasons; it was 10th the year before.

        But it had been No.7 in 1996-97 and '97-98, and the possible dearth of tourney teams would be news. Only once since 1990 has the league had fewer than three teams: two in 1994-95, including Massachusetts as a No.2 seed.

        “I don't know if it's a cycle or a trend,” ESPN.com columnist Joe Lunardi said. “Last year with three teams in the tournament, the seeds weren't great. (Saint Joseph's was tops with a ninth seed, the lowest for the A-10's best team since 1991.)

        “Those five-bid years, those were the years where there was a UMass or a Temple, generally speaking, as a Top 10 team. That just hasn't happened for a couple years now. We're stuck with very good teams, and in order to carry the banner of the league you need great.”

        The A-10 Tournament winner gets the league's automatic bid, and if that isn't XU, its RPI (No.20 as of Monday) should wear well. With the RPI cutoff for the last at-large bids usually coming in the mid-40s, the only other at-large possibility would be if St. Bonaventure (No.62 RPI), Dayton (65) or Saint Joe's (80) wins out from now until the A-10 title game.

        “If there only ends up being one team, that would have to be a concern for the league,” Fordham coach Bob Hill said.

        The NCAA divvies up tournament revenue based on how well each conference does. Each game a league team plays means one share of revenue for that league. Besides a revenue windfall, the A-10 wants multiple bids to fuel the perception of a healthy league.

        It has done well in terms of balance; the 112.9 average RPI of its members is better than in the three-bid seasons of 1999-2000 (117.8) and 1998-99 (134.6) and the four-bid season of '95-96 (118.8).

        “While the league's power rating is similar to recent years, that's because the teams on the bottom have been a little better,” Lunardi said. “If anything, the teams on top have collectively underachieved.”

        The A-10's non-conference strength of schedule is rated No.1. But other than Bonaventure's in-league victory over XU, the only victory the league has over a team currently in the RPI's top 25 is a Bonnies upset of Connecticut (No.13).

        Lunardi, part of the Saint Joe's radio team, has seen a team picked in the preseason top 10 falter with losses to the likes of Eastern Washington, Georgia State and Penn. Another preseason ranked team, Temple, has made the NCAAs 12 consecutive years and 17 of the past 18 but is just 11-13 this season.

        “If one team goes this year, I think that's a fluke,” Lunardi said. “Who would have thought at the beginning of the season that Temple and Saint Joe's wouldn't go to the tournament? That's not the league's fault.”

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