This season, five new head coaches will roam the sidelines in the Atlantic 10, and they are excited to be part of the conference.
Loyola Chicago head coach Morgan Paige believes that over the last few years, the A-10 has been one of the best mid-major conferences.
“It’s the perfect balance of being able to come in, learn how to be a head coach and really grow what I want the program to be,” Paige told The IX Sports. “But also playing really, really good competition every night in a league where they had two [NCAA Tournament] bids last year. And that is something I know the A-10’s gonna continue to strive for as we continue to move forward and women’s basketball keeps growing at the rate that it is.”
While Fordham head coach Neil Harrow served as associate head coach at James Madison from 2022 to 2025, the Dukes played multiple A-10 teams. He has long admired the conference for “just [doing] it right.”
With more than a third of the 14 A-10 schools hiring new coaches, including two of the top three teams from last season, and roster changes around the conference, Harrow believes the A-10 is more open than it’s been the last couple of years. He sees that as both a challenge and an opportunity.
In fact, he and Richmond head coach Alisa Kresge both see competing in the A-10 as their biggest challenge in their new jobs.
“There’s not any [A-10] game you’re walking into and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s gonna be an easy one, even if we don’t bring our A game,’” Kresge told The IX Sports. “And so just making sure that we stay true to who we are and continue to challenge ourselves to get better every day. And worry about the small details and not the end goal, because you can’t get there without handling the small details.”
Kresge is excited to be part of a conference that’s been a two-bid league the last two seasons. She believes that with the NCAA Tournament expanding from 68 to 76 teams, the conference should be getting at least two bids annually in the years to come.
Rhode Island head coach Colleen Mullen is glad to be back in the A-10 after playing for Rhode Island from 1998 to 2000. “The A-10 is just such a competitive league, from top to bottom,” she said. “… [And] the mission of the A-10 of really developing future scholar-athletes, I think, allows me to really recruit and attract a high level of student-athlete.”
VCU head coach Chelsea Banbury also looks forward to the competitiveness of the conference and seeing how her basketball knowledge lines up with that of the other A-10 coaches.
“It’s gonna challenge you every day, but obviously you gotta show up and play every single game. But that’s so fun,” Banbury told The IX Sports. “There’s a lotta good players, a lot of good coaches, and … that’s exciting. The competitive side of me loves that.”
Neil Harrow takes over at Fordham
Fordham head coach Neil Harrow poses for a photo with the Ram at his introductory press conference. (Photo credit: Fordham Athletics)
A few months before becoming the head coach at Fordham, Harrow talked to his friend, mentor and former boss, James Madison head coach Sean O’Regan. Harrow said, “Imagine if I was able to coach in the A-10?”
He was hired to do just that after leading LIU to a 21-11 record and the NEC Tournament championship game in his lone season at the helm.
“[It’s a] really, really, really special opportunity for me to be here. And not just Fordham, but being in the A-10 is really special and definitely a dream [come true],” Harrow told The IX Sports.
One thing he appreciates about Fordham is how well-rounded it is.
“The academics are amazing, the campus is beautiful, the location’s great and the athletics [are] also really strong across the board. And there’s great history there,” Harrow said. “… During my interview on campus, when I saw the people and met some of the people that were just walking around campus, staff and students, it just — it’s clearly a special place.”
Last season, Fordham had the 12th-worst offensive rating (points scored per 100 possessions) in the A-10 at 84.5 and the 11th-worst defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) at 91.4.
“I’m excited to … make improvements,” Harrow said. “How do we get this program on track and more competitive? … I think it’s gonna be a fun ride.”
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Staying in the New York area was important to him, and he believes that being in a major city is advantageous for recruiting. Harrow wants to bring and keep players home — transfers and high school prospects, respectively — as well as tap into international recruiting.
He wants to find players who are efficient shooters but wants the team to be strong on both ends of the floor, noting, “There’s no point in scoring 75 [if] you give up 80.”
Fordham returns six players from last season, and Harrow and his staff spent time ensuring the new players aligned with the attributes they were looking for.
“It’s not just about talent; it’s about the right people,” he said. “They have to fit what our standards are for our locker room and our culture as well as on the court. And they have to fit Fordham. And they have to also be good players.”
Loyola Chicago hires first-time head coach Morgan Paige
Loyola Chicago head coach Morgan Paige poses in front of her welcome message at Gentile Arena. (Photo credit: Loyola Chicago Athletics)
In early April, Paige was participating in the 2026 Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Next Generation Institute when she found out that Loyola Chicago deputy athletic director/senior woman administrator (SWA) Holly Strauss-O’Brien was going to reach out to her. At the time, Paige was the associate head coach at Kansas.
Though she was preparing, she wasn’t actively searching for her first head coaching role. As she interviewed, she felt drawn to the school and the role.
“When I left campus, [I] was really hoping that they were gonna offer me the job, ’cause it did, it felt different than anything I had ever gone through before, in the best way,” Paige said.
On March 31, Loyola Chicago head coach Allison Guth resigned “based on [her] personal need for more time with [her] family.” Last season, she led the Ramblers to a 16-18 record, an eighth-place finish in the A-10 and the WNIT Super 16 in the program’s first WNIT appearance.
Paige has told the players that it isn’t a rebuild.
“Inside the locker room you have great, great kids that are … really good students,” she said. “They’re actually here for Loyola; they’re trying to accomplish what they set out to do in their recruiting process. They wanna move them up. They wanna make them more competitive.
“That experience doesn’t have to change, even though I’m stepping into the reins. And I think that’s … unique [and] exciting. You don’t have to start over. I think the foundation that’s in the locker room, they know what they wanna pursue, and it’s my job to empower them to keep climbing and try to reach higher heights.”
In 2014, she graduated from Wisconsin, where she averaged 10.4 points, 1.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists over 118 games in four seasons. After a year of playing professionally in Romania, Paige became a graduate assistant at Iowa State in 2015 before taking an assistant coach position at North Dakota State the next year and heading to Kansas in 2021.
Paige worked for Kansas head coach Brandon Schneider for five seasons. Though she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a head coach, he pushed and empowered her to pursue that dream.
She often heard Schneider say that three to five unplanned things are going to come up every day that will need to be dealt with. He didn’t tell her how to handle them, instead saying that she needed to find her “coach voice” in her program. Schneider did tell her she’s been in some of the situations she’ll face before, even though she wasn’t the one making the final decision then.
After more than 2 decades, Colleen Mullen returns to Rhode Island
Rhode Island head coach Colleen Mullen poses with Rhody the Ram (left), vice president/director of athletics Pat Lyons (second from left) and president Marc Parlange (right) at her introductory press conference. (Photo credit: Rhode Island Athletics)
Twenty-eight years after Mullen came to Rhode Island as a freshman on the basketball team, she was named its head coach. After two seasons in Kingston, she transferred to New Hampshire. In 102 career games across both programs, she averaged 7.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.0 steals.
Among the people she talked to about the job opening was one of her assistant coaches from her playing days in Kingston, current UMass assistant coach Dayna Smith, whose name can still be found throughout the Rhode Island record book. Smith was part of the program’s first NCAA Tournament team as a player in 1996 and is part of its Hall of Fame and Ring of Honor.
“We talked so much about … our passion for URI,” Mullen told The IX Sports. “And hearing how influential URI was on her life and her experiences and really molding her to [be] the coach and leader she is now, I think that was a huge piece of me knowing what type of school and what type of program it is at Rhode Island and how it can truly leave a lasting impression on my student-athletes that I recruit here.”
She takes over a program coming off its second A-10 regular-season co-championship, its first Atlantic 10 Tournament title and its second NCAA Tournament appearance.
Mullen amassed a 139-102 record in eight seasons at UAlbany, including two regular-season championships as well as one conference tournament championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
It took a special opportunity for her to leave UAlbany because of its support of women’s basketball and the community she built. Mullen, already familiar with Rhode Island, met with vice president/director of athletics Pat Lyons, deputy athletic director/chief operating officer Brittney Miles, and now-former associate athletic director/SWA Gina Sperry. After hearing their vision for the program, she knew that Rhode Island was the right fit.
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Mullen’s vision for the program is to be the gold standard in everything it does and to have a consistent commitment to its standard of excellence in the classroom, on campus and in the community, and on the court. She said that after relationships and trust are built, the sky is the limit for player development and how the team develops as a whole.
Since returning to campus, Mullen has been flooded with memories, and the experience has felt full circle. “I’m excited to kinda take off here from where I left off,” she said.
Alisa Kresge takes over at Richmond
Then-Vermont head coach Alisa Kresge talks to her team in a huddle during a timeout in a game against Louisville in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky., on March 21, 2026. (Photo credit: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
When Kresge talked to Brian Giorgis about the opening at Richmond, she knew her mentor, former head coach and former boss would be straightforward with her.
“This was the first job that he was like, ‘It’s a no-brainer for you, Kres,’” she said. “He’s never said that before. And he’s been around the business for a long time; he knows the people, the players, the universities, the style of play and things like that.”
She averaged 2.8 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.8 steals over 125 games in four seasons playing for Giorgis at Marist.
In eight seasons at Vermont, Kresge recorded a 145-89 record, became the program’s winningest coach, and made the NCAA Tournament three times and the WNIT semifinals once over the last four seasons. She takes over a Richmond program that has been to the NCAA Tournament in each of the last three seasons and won its first NCAA Tournament game in 2025.
Vermont was Kresge’s first head coaching job, and over time, she learned the importance of communicating and being transparent.
“Communicating is a big piece of building relationships and I think getting the most [out] of each other. Or winning games we shouldn’t win is because we’ve communicated, we understand each other, we know how to push each other [and] we know how to support each other,” Kresge said. “And so those are just things I think I’ve been even more transparent [about] than I ever was early on with our teams, so they understand where we’re coming from.”
Though leaving Vermont was difficult, she’s excited about the opportunity, including how Richmond approaches college athletics holistically. She’s also heard many positive things about the Richmond community, alumni and people on campus and how they rally around women’s basketball and other sports. Richmond was second in the conference in home attendance last year and averaged nearly 2,000 fans per game.
Kresge wants her team to work hard, play with passion, love each other, have fun and win.
“My vision is always just to do it the right way,” she said. “I think if you do it the right way, and you get people that are like-minded or passionate about the right things and are willing to work hard, the rest will come. And of course, we wanna be successful on the court, but it’s more than just that. It’s successful in life. …
“[I get to] help them live their dreams out and even expand that vision of what they think they’re capable of. … [I hope that] when they look back, they loved every second of it, even the hard days, because it helped grow them as human beings and [prepared] them for life after college.”
VCU hires High Point’s Chelsea Banbury
Then-High Point head coach Chelsea Banbury looks toward the court as her team takes on Vanderbilt in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville, Tenn., on March 21, 2026. (Photo credit: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Coming off her third straight regular-season Big South championship and second straight NCAA Tournament appearance at High Point, Banbury wasn’t looking for a new job when VCU reached out to her.
After talking to VCU vice president and director of athletics Ed McLaughlin about his vision and what she wanted out of her career, her next step was clear.
“I love making the NCAA Tournament and all that, but I do wanna be in a league that … can position you to hopefully have success in the NCAA Tournament and not just be happy with getting there and then getting matched up against the [No.] 1 or 2 seeds [as] a [No.] 15 or 16 seed,” Banbury said.
To do that, she wants to build a program that consistently finishes at the top of the A-10 and is still playing during the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
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Banbury went 140-79 in seven seasons at High Point after spending the first 11 years of her coaching career at Florida Gulf Coast (FGCU). She spent the first two years of her college playing career at Yavapai College before transferring to FGCU. After redshirting the 2005-06 season due to injury, she averaged 8.1 points, 3.0 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.2 steals in 65 games over her final two collegiate seasons.
VCU went 8-23 (4-14 A-10) last season, and Banbury believes the biggest immediate challenge that awaited her was flipping the team’s mentality from last season.
“It’s tough going through a season winning eight games, [and] just understanding that things have to change, and … it’s gonna take a conscious effort to fix habits,” she said. “… You have to consciously be trying to change things for that to ever get fixed.”
Over the course of her career, Banbury has learned how important building a team and a culture with the right people is. For her, the right people are those who are willing to work and buy into what she wants to do as a coach and how she wants the team to play.
“We’re gonna show up, we’re gonna work and we’re gonna enjoy doing it because we’re around the right people and people that enjoy playing together and working towards a common goal,” she said. “So the standard is gonna be no one’s gonna outwork us. Effort will never be our mistake, and we’ll learn basketball and be, hopefully, pretty good basketball players along the way.”
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