The Atlantic 10 calls La Salle's women's team last season one of the strongest in program history, and the league's coaches still picked them 10th of 14. The roster page gives a reason to wonder, and so does the crowd count.
Records, stats, rosters and schedules are from La Salle's athletics site. Poll figures are from the Atlantic 10. Attendance is ESPN's announced figure from box scores, and our league comparison counts completed home games on campus sites, three of them excluded for having no figure. Rates and rankings marked as ours are Negadelphia arithmetic. The roster pages do not say why players left, and we do not say.
La Salle finished 2025-26 at 19-14, and 10-8 in the A10, according to its own schedule page. ESPN's final standings list the Explorers sixth, one spot behind Saint Joseph's. Both finished 10-8, and Saint Joseph's beat La Salle 69-60 on Jan. 10 and 69-65 on Jan. 28. La Salle won the A10 tournament's second round over Saint Louis, 59-51, on Mar. 5, then lost 70-51 to Richmond in the quarterfinal the next night, both at Henrico, Va. In the WNIT, La Salle beat Binghamton 70-61 at home on Mar. 23 and lost 74-63 at Army two days later.
The Atlantic 10's preseason release describes the team as "coming off one of the strongest campaigns in program history." It also says the coaches picked La Salle 10th with 78 points. Saint Joseph's was the unanimous favorite with 196 points and all 14 first-place votes, and Davidson was second with 181. La Salle's release says Joanie Quinn made the preseason all-conference second team and Kiara Williams the third team, and that both return along with six incoming freshmen. Quinn averaged 11.2 points last year and shot 43.8 percent from three in league play, the fourth-best mark in the league, according to La Salle. Williams averaged 9.6 points and 4.9 rebounds.
The roster is the first thing that does not match last year's team. Connor and Macktoon scored 1,017 of La Salle's 2,133 points, 47.7 percent by our math, and both averaged at least 15 a game. Seven of the 14 players who appeared in games last season are not on the 2026-27 roster. Their points add up to 1,261, or 59.1 percent. The seven who are on both rosters scored 872, or 40.9 percent. Quinn and Williams, the two preseason all-conference picks, scored 684 of those points, or 32.1 percent.
La Salle's roster now lists 15 players: six freshmen, five juniors and four sophomores, and no seniors. Two of the juniors, Hassana Amadu and Vivien Nejašmic, were not on last year's roster. Nejašmic's roster entry lists Xavier as a previous school. The staff page lists Mountain MacGillivray as head coach. We did not find a comment from MacGillivray or La Salle about the poll.
The record last year also rested on a thin margin. La Salle outscored opponents by 0.7 points a game over the season and by 1.6 in A10 play, by our math from its stats page.
Attendance is the other number to weigh. La Salle's own stats page counts 15 home games with 8,970 fans, an average of 598. Without the 2,942 who came on Nov. 8, 2025, which La Salle's schedule lists as Homecoming, the other 14 averaged 431. The median was 385, and 11 of the 15 crowds were under 500. The smallest was 123, for Davidson on Jan. 18.
Against the league, by our math from ESPN's announced figures, La Salle's average of 598 ranks 12th of 14, and its median ranks 13th. Dayton averaged 2,946. The league-wide median across the 209 games with a figure was 804. Teams count home games differently and several hosted postseason games, so treat the ranking as a rough one.
Opinion: the picks give voters something to point to, but the poll does not say what they pointed to, and a preseason poll is the coaches' opinion, not a result. The roster change is a fact worth weighing. It is not proof that 10th is right.
The 10th pick is a prediction, and the standings will settle it. Any final finish above 10th beats the poll, and last year's sixth place is the bar to match. Quinn, who shot 43.8 percent from three in league play, and Williams are back, and the team has the second-round tournament win to build on.
The schedule gives early checks. La Salle opens Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. at Rutgers, then plays its home opener Saturday, Nov. 7, at noon against Loyola Maryland. La Salle lists that game as Homecoming, the label it also carried on last year's best-attended game. The Atlantic 10 says league play starts Dec. 2.
The benchmarks are ours. A home average above the league median of 804, and a conference scoring margin above last year's 1.6 a game, would say the program has moved past last year's numbers.
Richmond 79, Temple 53. The Spiders scored the first 14 points in a building Temple hadn't played in for four years, on the night it turned 100. One week after a 17-0 start, the Owls had as many turnovers as made field goals.
Halftime was 54-31. Final was 97-93. Penn State set a program free-throw record at 43 of 49 and still watched Anigbata's three cut it to one possession with under a second left. Credit the free throws. Do not hide the second half. Pitt is next.
Burton was the purchase: 42.5 percent on 76 threes at Stephen F. Austin. He led La Salle with 15 points and four threes in the Houston opener. Volume is not a clinic. Homecoming against LIU is where the bet has to look real at home.
Last year Temple beat George Mason in overtime. This year Turner goes for 21 with five threes on the road and the Owls lose by 20. Credit her night. Do not hide the boards or the score. Navy at home is the next read.
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