The 2012 Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament is coming up soon, to be played at Boardwalk Hall in New Jersey starting on March 6. Two Ohio teams are currently jockeying for position to get higher seeds in the conference tourney, which will help determine which teams from the relatively tiny conference will get shots at the NCAA Tournament later in March.
The Xavier Musketeers are in good position right now, third in the conference after beating Dayton on Saturday. They're two games behind conference leading Temple, but have four games against teams lower than themselves in order to make up the gap.
As it stands, for the tournament Xavier would grab the three seed which would give them a first round bye, playing the winner of the battle between the six and 11 seeds in the second round. That would be between La Salle and Charlotte if the standings don't change between now and the tournament's start.
The Dayton Flyers obviously lost to Xavier on Saturday, but are still not doing too terribly right now as they could move up to fourth from eighth in the conference with a single win thanks to the closely packed teams near the top of the conference. With four games remaining they could even theoretically take the conference lead, though that would require just about every team in front of them to lose almost every game until the tourney starts.
Currently, Dayton's eighth seed would pit them against the tenth seeded Richmond Spiders in the tournament. The winner of that game will go on to face the second seed, which right now would be the Saint Louis Billikens.
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