Steve Donahue won Atlantic 10 and Big 5 Coach of the Year at Saint Joseph's. Nine players who scored about 61 percent of last season's points are gone, and the A-10 picked the Hawks sixth.
Records, awards and schedule dates come from the schools, the Atlantic 10 and the Inquirer. The list of players who left comes from the Inquirer's transfer tracker, checked against Saint Joseph's roster and UAB's announcement. We don't say why anyone left, because the sources don't. "Seven out" counts players from the 2025-26 roster who are at other schools now, including one the Inquirer's tracker lists as dismissed in December. Opinion is labeled.
Steve Donahue's first season at Saint Joseph's ended with 24 wins, a third-place finish in the Atlantic 10 and Coach of the Year honors from both the A-10 and the Big 5. The question for year two is whether the Hawks can repeat that after losing seven players to other schools, plus Derek Simpson, the Big 5 Player of the Year, and Justice Ajogbor, the A-10's co-Defensive Player of the Year. The facts can show what left and what stayed. They cannot show how the new group plays, because Saint Joseph's opens Nov. 4 against Longwood.
Donahue got the job by an unusual route. On March 10, 2025, Penn announced that he wouldn't be back (the Inquirer calls it a dismissal) after nine seasons. Billy Lange then left Saint Joseph's to join the Knicks as an assistant, and Donahue became the Hawks' head coach about two months before the season started, per the Inquirer.
The start did not look like a 24-win team. Deuce Jones II, the leading scorer early on, left the program on Dec. 23, per the Inquirer (its transfer tracker says he was dismissed). By Jan. 3, Saint Joseph's was 8-7 and 0-2 in the A-10.
Then it flipped. The Hawks won 13 of their last 16 regular-season games and went 13-5 in the A-10, good for third place and the program's first double bye since 2018. They lost to VCU in the conference semifinals, took an NIT bid, won at Colorado State 69-64 and at California 76-75, then lost 84-69 at New Mexico in the quarterfinals. The first-round win was their first NIT win in two decades, per the Inquirer. Final record: 24-12. The A-10 named Donahue Coach of the Year. The Big 5 did too.
Seven players from last year's roster are at other schools, according to the Inquirer's tracker. Jones went to UAB, where he averaged 15.8 points in 10 games for the Hawks, per UAB. Dasear Haskins, a starter who averaged 11.1 points, went to Ole Miss. Anthony Finkley, who averaged 19 minutes in 35 games, went to La Salle, which means he'll be on the other side of an A-10 game.
The other four were smaller parts. Kevin Kearney (Manhattan) appeared in 14 games, Al Amadou (Wisconsin-Milwaukee) in 11 and Steven Solano (Delaware) in eight. Jaden Smith (Ball State) averaged 8.9 minutes, per Saint Joseph's stats page.
Two more key players are gone for other reasons. Simpson, who averaged 13.8 points, used up his eligibility. Ajogbor, who averaged 6.5 points, graduated, and he blocked 77 of the Hawks' 169 shots.
Put the nine together and the loss is large. By our count from Saint Joseph's 2025-26 stats page, those nine scored 1,615 of the team's 2,633 points, about 61 percent. The returners who scored account for 1,018, about 39 percent. Jaiden Glover-Toscano alone had 535 (15.7 per game). With Austin Williford (7.8) and Khaafiq Myers (5.1), the three account for 991 of the 1,018. Points leave out minutes, defense and fit, so this is one measure, not a verdict.
Saint Joseph's kept seven players from last year, per the Inquirer, and brought in five transfers and three freshmen. The roster lists Logan Carey (Maine), Donovan Flamer (Elizabeth City State), Sean Logan (Davidson), Gavin Marrs (Oregon State) and Luis Nonfon (Augusta) as the transfers.
Logan has the numbers that bear most directly on the loss of Ajogbor. The Inquirer says Donahue recruited him out of Westfield, N.J. He led the A-10 in blocks per game last season, 2.4 (63 in 26 games at Davidson), per Davidson's stats and Sports-Reference, and made the preseason all-defensive team. Those are Davidson numbers, and nothing yet shows how they carry over. We don't rate the other four transfers or the three freshmen here, because the sources we checked give no numbers for them at Saint Joseph's.
The A-10 picked Saint Joseph's sixth of 14 teams, with 181 points. VCU, Saint Louis, Dayton, George Mason and George Washington are ahead of it. Last year, the Hawks finished third. Glover-Toscano is on the preseason first team after making the second team last season, and Logan is on the defensive team.
Opinion: with about 61 percent of the scoring gone, a repeat of third place is a fair thing to doubt, and a sixth-place pick is a reasonable reading of the roster. It is still only a pick.
The poll is a guess. Last year's team was 8-7 and 0-2 in the A-10 on Jan. 3 and finished third, so an early picture is not the final one. Big 5 rosters look like this now, too: the Inquirer's tracker says all six Big 5 men's coaches, not just Donahue, have had major roster turnover this offseason. Penn's Ethan Roberts, a second-team Big 5 pick, is headed to Notre Dame.
Donahue also has the two players the league just honored. Glover-Toscano, who averaged 15.7 points, stayed after the Inquirer reported there was buzz he'd enter the portal. Logan, a Davidson transfer, is on the defensive team.
Jon Rothstein reported for 247Sports that Donahue has an extension through the 2030-31 season, and the Inquirer relayed the report on Oct. 20. A school spokesperson told the Inquirer the school could not confirm specific contract terms. We haven't seen a contract, and nothing in this piece depends on it.
How we could be wrong: the new transfers fit quickly, the freshmen help, and the sixth-place pick turns out to be the same kind of low estimate the Hawks beat last year. Opinion: whether the new roster holds up is something we won't know before January.
Saint Joseph's opens Nov. 4 against Longwood. Penn visits Hagan Arena on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+).
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