When Ganiyat Adeduntan accepted the job to lead the George Washington University women’s basketball program last March, she made one thing clear to her team: don’t book any vacation in March. Spring break would no longer be for GW women’s basketball.
The beach chairs are firmly tucked away as the Revolutionaries are making their return to postseason play for the first time since 2018, when Adeduntan was an assistant coach with the program. GW earned a bid to the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT), where it hosts a first-round matchup against Bradley at 6 p.m. Thursday night at the Charles E. Smith Center.
Adeduntan returned with high expectations to Foggy Bottom after a four-year stint serving as head coach at Colgate University, recognizing the amount of work and buy-in needed to return the program to playoff hoops after an eight-year hiatus.
After overcoming a 1-4 start, the GW Revs got to work. They finished the regular season with 15 wins, including seven in Atlantic-10 conference action, both surpassing the program’s win totals from the previous two seasons. GW rode a mid-season seven-game win streak and an 11-5 home record to propel themselves back into the postseason for the 24th time in program history.
“The goal always, from the beginning for me, was to help this program get back to the postseason and to be able to give this group of players the opportunity and the taste of what it looks like,” Adeduntan said. “To do it with this group in this first year feels great. And for me, I just want to make sure we’re putting out another great product when we show up on Thursday.”
This marks the sixth time GW will be participants in the WNIT and the first time since 2017.
Every new coach hopes to imprint an identity and culture early during their tenure, and Adeduntan was adamant that her team play with maximum effort and energy on both sides of the floor.
It paid off as GW saw an uptick in numerous statistical categories compared to the 2024-25 season, including points per game, team field goal percentage, team three-point percentage, blocks per game, steals per game, assists per game and scoring margin.
“There was an importance of every possession and an importance of the little things like rebounding and turnovers and valuing the ball,” said junior forward Sara Lewis. “I think as a team we started to realize the importance of those small things that end up becoming big things.”
While sophomore guard Gabby Reynolds has led the way offensively for GW, earning third-team all-Atlantic 10 honors while scoring in double figures 23 times during the season, the team has relied on a balanced attack while having a plus-46 scoring margin in the second half of all games, illustrating a knack for managing crucial situations.
“I feel like we stepped up in a lot of big moments throughout the year,” Reynolds said. “Obviously there are some games that we talk about that we wish we could get back, but overall I think we’re just proud of the growth that we had.
“It’s cool just because we’re such a young team with little experience playing together. But throughout the year, people were able to see how much we were able to get our chemistry together.”
Indeed, seven of the eight leading scorers for GW are non-senior players, and getting a taste of postseason basketball will be a strong part of the foundation the program is building under Adeduntan.
Thursday’s contest against Bradley will also bring the postseason back to the Smith Center, where teams of GW lore have provided some of the program’s finest moments. Led by program giants such as Athletics Hall of Famers Tajama (Abraham) Ngongba and Lisa Cermignano, GW won at the Smith Center to advance to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament during both the 1995 and 1997 seasons.
It means a great deal to this current team to not only bring postseason basketball back to GW but to the venue celebrating its 50th anniversary season that has housed iconic moments in team history.
“It’s about taking pride in the people that came before us and understanding that we play on a court where a lot of talented women played before us,” Lewis said. “They allowed us to be in the position that we’re in and to be able to play in the postseason.”
Mid-March has arrived. For Adeduntan’s Revolutionaries both this season and what she envisions as many seasons to come, that means the work is far from finished.
Tickets for Thursday’s first round matchup are on sale now and can be purchased here.