La Salle Basketball: Rebuild takes step back with Ed Croswell departure

La Salle basketball confronts another obstacle in its rebuild with the sudden departure of Ed Croswell.

The rebuild on 20th and Olney hasn’t always been clean or easy for Ashley Howard. The second-year La Salle basketball coach, tasked with resurrecting a program that’s been largely irrelevant – aside from a Sweet Sixteen run in 2013 – since joining the Atlantic 10 in the mid-90’s, has dealt with injuries, inconsistencies on the court, a learning curve with which every first-time head coach has to deal.

Despite obvious setbacks – like multiple knee injuries to Jack Clark, which has kept the Philadelphia native mostly off the floor since his junior year of high school, the early loss this season of graduate transfer and former Syracuse commit Mustapha Diagne and a wave of transfers this past offseason – the rebuild looked to be on track. After losing their first ten games under Howard in the 2018-19 season, the Explorers finished with an astonishingly respectable 8-10 A10 record. Even with the graduation of Pookie Powell, one of the better players to pass through the school during the Atlantic 10 era, the Explorers won nine of their first 12 this season.

The stage seemed set for Ashley Howard to bring the program back to the top half of the conference standings much sooner than some had expected. But a rocky conference season, despite a string of success for La Salle towards the end of February, followed, and the Explorers sit at 14-14 overall, 5-11 in league play. They sit at 11th in the 14-team A10.

Still, Howard’s project seemed to be moving along in a direction most around the program were hoping it would upon his arrival. A pair of freshman guards, DC-area natives Sherif Kenney and Ayinde Hikim, have shown the potential to form the nucleus of a competitive backcourt, Indiana transfer Clifton Moore is sitting out for a redshirt season before joining the Explorers on the court next season, and sophomore Ed Croswell had developed into a dominant frontcourt presence, leading the nation, according to KenPom, in offensive rebounding efficiency.

Croswell’s surprising move

But La Salle was struck an unexpected blow with the Friday announcement that Croswell was leaving the team immediately and seeking a transfer. No reason was given publicly for the oddly-timed decision, but Mike Jensen of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “disciplinary issues” were not a factor.

Regardless of the reasons or irregularities of a player leaving a team at the tail-end of a regular season, La Salle basketball has to find a way to replace Croswell and his 10 points/seven rebounds a game to maintain an upward trajectory. He’s already received interest from at least seven major-conference programs, including Seton Hall, Arkansas and SMU, according to Jeff Borzello.

La Salle’s chances of hanging around in Brooklyn for the Atlantic 10 tournament already took a blow with Croswell’s departure, and it’ll be Howard’s job to plug a now-massive hole in his frontcourt to keep La Salle’s momentum trending in the right direction.