Atlantic 10 Announces Women's Basketball Conference Pairings

Newport News, Va. – The Atlantic 10 has today announced its conference pairings for the upcoming 2019-20 season. Once again the league slate will feature 16 games for its 14 members. The Fordham women's basketball team won the 2019 Atlantic 10 championship, the program's second, and a share of its first-ever regular season title. Each team will face the other 13 schools once and three teams twice. The 2020 Atlantic 10 Championship will be played March 6-8 at University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio with, for a third straight year, first round contests hosted on campus sites on March 3. The complete conference schedule with dates and times, as well as national television information, will be released at a later date. The Rams will play home and away contests with Davidson, Dayton, and Saint Louis. Fordham will host George Washington, La Salle, Rhode Island, Saint Joseph's, and St. Bonaventure, while traveling to Duquesne, George Mason, Massachusetts, Richmond, and VCU. It is the sixth straight year that the Rams and Wildcats will face off twice during the regular season, all since Davidson joined the Atlantic 10, and it is the third straight season Fordham has been paired with Dayton and Saint Louis. Fordham's 25 wins were tied for third-most in the program's history, while the squad, one of the youngest in the country, set a new record with nine straight conference wins and tied the record with a 12-game overall win streak that stretched into and through the Atlantic 10 championship, where the Rams coasted to the title with an average margin of victory of just under 23 points across three games. After starting the year 5-5, the team went on a 20-3 run to finish with a 13-3 record in league play, a new school benchmark for victories, and a first-round bye. Fordham made its third-ever appearance at the NCAA Tournament with a trip to #12 Syracuse. The Rams enjoyed their highest-ever finish in the national ranks in several categories, namely finishing the year ninth in the country in scoring defense, allowing just 54.4 points per game. Fordham was also seventh in turnovers per game (11.5) and ninth in fouls per game (13.3). The Rams were 37th in assist/turnover ratio (1.14) and sank the 37th-most three-pointers in the nation (267), a new school single-season record. In regard to the former number, five players finished with at least 50 assists on the year and four recorded between 80 and 94.