I'd say it's a fair assessment that most men's basketball fans on campus understand and appreciate the history and tradition of UD basketball.

But I don't think that fans at UD or members of the national media that cover men's basketball necessarily understand or respect the conference that the Flyers belong to. The tradition of many of the basketball programs within the Atlantic 10 Conference, the quality of coaching and the conference's collective success are just a few reasons why we as UD fans should feel lucky to be a part of one of the strongest non-Bowl Championship Series conferences in college basketball.

Dayton Head Coach Brian Gregory has long been a strong proponent of the A-10 and the strength of the conference. I sat down with him last week to get his input as a coach that knows the conference as well as anyone.

"You look at it and last year [the A-10] had three teams go to the NCAA Tournament," Gregory said. "The year before that there was three. And both those years we had multiple teams in the NIT or other postseason tournaments."

According to the conference's Web site, the 2008-2009 season marked the 15th time in Conference history and the sixth since 2000 that multiple A-10 teams earned at-large berths to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The conference also received two of just four at-large bids awarded to non-BCS conferences last season and over the past two seasons, the A-10 leads all non-BCS conferences with six NCAA berths.

Gregory said that he feels there are a couple points of differentiation that the conference boasts that go unnoticed.

"One, the quality of players that are in this league," Gregory said. "Every team in this league has four or five guys that were recruited by BCS schools. The second thing is that every coach has either been established at their program or has had great success that has led them to get this job."

Coaching perhaps is the most glaring strength of the Atlantic 10. The conference has two hall of fame coaches in Rick Majerus of St. Louis and Phil Martelli of St. Joe's.

"Phil has made a huge impact on the game not only as a coach but as an ambassador for college basketball," Gregory said. "You go down the list of the other coaches with Jim Baron [Rhode Island] with his great success. And if you're young and you're a coach in this league, you got a pretty good pedigree coming in. It's not as though you're going to win games because you're outcoaching someone. Believe me, that's not going to happen."

Gregory further cited the individual talent level in the conference as a strong point.

"We have more national players of the year than a lot of conferences. Marcus Camby (UMass), Jameer Nelson (St. Joe's) and David West (Xavier). We've had three in the last 12 years," Gregory said. "That's more than the Big Ten and more than the Pac-10. Sometimes it's disheartening that the league doesn't get the credit that it deserves."

Perhaps most importantly, every school in the conference hangs its hat on its men's basketball team. Since basketball is the most important sport, that is the focal point of every school's recruiting, resulting in some great talent.

"Every one of our schools - their athletic tradition has been based on their success in men's basketball," Gregory said. "So every single one is a basketball school, so to speak. With the Conference's success against the BCS and in the tournament, outside the BCS there's no comparison to any other league - it's not even close."