Bob Ferry was an All-American basketball player in the 1950s for Saint Louis University, at the time a member of the Missouri Valley Conference.
Ferry went on to play in the NBA, including a stint with the Baltimore Bullets in the 1960s, and was later the general manager of the Washington Bullets. His son, Danny, played at DeMatha High in Hyattsville and Duke and worked in several NBA front offices.
Saint Louis, meanwhile, became a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference in time for the 2005-06 hoop season. Now the elder Ferry and his alma mater will reunite this week as the Atlantic 10 tournament comes to the nation’s capital for the first time, with the 14-school event being held Wednesday to Sunday at the Capital One Arena.
On the line is an automatic bid to the NCAA tourney for the A-10 champion.
“I think it is great,” said the elder Ferry, 80, a long-time Annapolis resident. “It is really good for Washington and really good for the tournament. It gives them high visibility in the nation’s capital.”
Ferry is a part-time scout for the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA and he hopes to cover the Atlantic 10 tourney at the home of the Washington Wizards.
His former school, Saint Louis (16-15, 9-9 in the A-10), will play Thursday as the No. 6 seed.
No. 5 seed George Mason (15-16, 9-9), which lost a shot at a top-four seed with a loss at home Saturday to Richmond (11-19, 9-9), will play Thursday at 2:30 p.m. against the winner of Wednesday’s game between No. 12 La Salle (13-18, 7-11) and No. 13 UMass (12-19, 5-13).
No. 11 seed George Washington (14-17, 7-11) will play in the second of two games Wednesday, around 8:30 p.m., against No. 14 Fordham (9-21, 4-14).
The Patriots of Mason have won three of their last four games in the closing seconds — all on shots by sophomore guard Ian Boyd. The A-10 staff would welcome more of those buzzer beaters that put the “Madness” in March in downtown D.C. this week.
Bernadette McGlade, the A-10 commissioner, hopes the conference draws at least 7,000 or 8,000 fans per session. “Those are good numbers for us,” McGlade said while watching the conference women’s tourney this past weekend in Richmond.
Now the men’s event will be in D.C. after being held in Pittsburgh last year and in New York City before that.
“I think anytime it is a first time, be it Pittsburgh or D.C., there is an air of excitement,” said Phil Martelli, the veteran Saint Joseph’s coach. “Basketball is so big in the grassroots in Washington and hopefully that will carry over to the college game.”
The tournament favorite is regular-season champion Rhode Island (23-6, 15-3), ranked No. 25 in the country after losing three of its last five. The Rams upset Creighton in the NCAA tournament last year.
No. 2 seed Saint Bonaventure (24-6, 14-4) is the other conference team that could gain an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney even if they fail to win the Atlantic 10 championship.
“They are in,” Martelli said of the Bonnies, who need to solidify that status this week. Bracketology expert Jerry Palm predicted Monday both URI and Saint Bonaventure would make the NCAA field.
URI won 83-64 at home Dec. 30 against Mason in the only meeting between the schools this season as Rams guard Jeff Dowtin (St. John’s College High in D.C.) had eight assists and Stanford Robinson (Paul VI in Fairfax) had 10 points.
“They are deep,” George Mason head coach Dave Paulsen said of URI. “They are really skilled. You really have to extend on the perimeter to guard them. They play four guards and they defend at a very high level every single night.”
Dowtin is among the conference leaders in assists per game while the top scorer for Mason is Otis Livingston II, at 17.5 points per contest.
The conference RPI is down to No. 11 in the country this year as of Monday. If it is any consolation no Atlantic 10 teams were named in the Yahoo sports report about the FBI investigation of possible federal violations with college hoops recruiting.
VCU (17-14, 9-9) has been to the NCAA tournament every year since 2011 but will have to win the tourney to gain the automatic bid. “We don’t have to play perfectly to win,” VCU head coach Mike Rhoades told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “But we have to play harder, and we have to play without a fear of failure.”
Several other schools, besides Rhode Island, have players from the talent-rich Baltimore-Washington corridor.
That includes Baltimore’s John Crosby, a junior for Dayton; Baltimore product and Coppin State transfer Chas Brown and sophomore forward Kellon Taylor of DeMatha of Duquesne; Fordham junior guard Brenton Petty of Woodrow Wilson High in The District; Mason junior A.J. Wilson of Laurel, Maryland; guard Johnnie Shuler (Theodore Roosevelt High in D.C.) and freshman guard Jamir Moultrie (Bishop McNamara) of La Salle; and St. Bonaventure senior guard Jaylen Adams, a product of Mount St. Joseph’s in Baltimore.
Many of those players from DMV grew up learning the game on local playgrounds, such as Barry Farms in southeast D.C. or in the Kenner League at Georgetown University.
“It is what you want out of playground basketball,” Mason’s Wilson, who briefly attended Bowie High in Maryland, said of Barry Farms. “You have the guys who like the trash-talking. It is really fun to play out there.”
Some of the top players in the tourney include E.G. Matthews of Rhode Island, Yuta Watanabe of George Washington and Adams and Matt Mobley of Saint Bonaventure. Adams had 34 points and Mobley 33 in a triple-overtime win over No. 3 seed Davidson (18-11, 13-5) last week that some have called the best game in the country this season.
Watanabe, one of the few Division I players from Japan, had a career-high 31 points on Senior Night in a win over Fordham last week. “I think he is interesting to me,” Ferry said of Watanabe. “He is 6-9 and is a good all-around player. Adams and Mobley, they are both very good.”
And now some local fans will get to see them for the first time.
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