By Patrick Stevens

CSNwashington.com/D1scourse.com

It is an annual routine. The CAA convenes its basketball media day and nearly everyone talks about the league’s ample depth.

And it’s a valid point … at least until someone bothers to look at the preseason rankings.

Old Dominion, George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth. Or maybe VCU, Old Dominion, Mason. Maybe it’s Mason, VCU, Old Dominion.

Order them together any way you wish. In any case, it’s the same three teams having a serious say over the how the conference will shake out. And less than four weeks before the season starts, it appears all three heavyweights will again be factors in the conference race.

Old Dominion, the defending league champ, is again the conference favorite. Mason, the nationally known entity thanks to its 2006 Final Four run, is expected to bounce back after a young team faded in the final month of last season. VCU, which has exported a player to the NBA in consecutive seasons, isn’t expected to fall far.

And it begs the question: Even as some teams sporadically enjoy strong seasons and others (Northeastern comes to mind) are nearly on the same level, how do the three Virginia schools remain titans of the solid, competitive league.

“They’ve got great coaches, and those guys have always had great success,” Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said. “Because of that, kids always want to be involved in that. So they do a good job of getting kids in year in and year out. Kids want to be involved in those environments and those type of situations, so you keep it going.”

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