Big 5 Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2019-20 season

4. La Salle

The Ash Howard era started slow at La Salle, with the first-year head coach winning his first games around Christmas last year. But the Explorers had a remarkable turnaround in the second half of the season, showing drastic improvement during Atlantic 10 play and finishing with a respectable 8-10 record in the league. Pookie Powell is gone along with a slew of transfers that left the program this off-season, but there’s plenty of reason to think La Salle will continue to improve in Howard’s second season.

What La Salle does have coming back is a corps of experienced guards led by Isiah Deas and Saul Phiri. Junior David Beatty will also be expected to shoulder a major share of the production burden from the backcourt, and Jack Clark, a former top-five Pennsylvania recruit who only played nine games between his senior year of high school and freshman year at La Salle due to injury should factor if healthy. The frontcourt returns Jared Kimbrough and Ed Croswell, who as a freshman was one of the best offensive rebounders in the country a year ago. Western Kentucky transfer Moustapha Diagne will be immediately eligible for Ash Howard, and four-star recruit Sherif Kenney and freshman Ayinde Hikim could also have early impacts.

La Salle has the talent to push Penn for the third spot in these rankings and may end up there by the end of the season. Howard still has a lot to clean up with this group, including a tendency to give games away at the free throw line (the Explorers had one of the worst rates in the country of opponents scoring from the stripe a season ago), but there’s enough here to think the rebuild could be accelerating faster than most thought it could. They have the balance of veteran leadership and exciting young talent that could help them surprise people in Atlantic 10 and Big 5 play.