INDIANAPOLIS - The Marian women's basketball team enters the 2025-26 season with high expectations, as Suntana Anderson enters her second season as the Knights' head coach and returns over 90 percent of the 2023-24 NAIA Quarterfinalists' scoring. On Friday, Anderson revealed her completed schedule for the 2025-26 season, as the 28-game regular season for Marian will get underway on November 1.

The Knights have built a testing 2025-26 schedule. The team will play 12 games throughout its season against teams that qualified for the 2025 NAIA National Tournament. Three of those teams are in the Crossroads League, setting up six grueling league games against 2025 qualifiers. 

Marian's season will tip on November 1 at home with a late-afternoon game against Pikeville. The Knights will follow the home opener one week later in the Chicagoland area, playing in the Catholic Classic against 2025 qualifiers St. Xavier and IU-Northwest. A home date on November 15 against the University of the Cumberlands will cap the five-game non-conference sprint to the beginning of the season, setting up the first two Crossroads League dates of the season.

A road trip to Bethel on November 19 will ignite conference play, and on November 22, the Knights host Spring Arbor in their first home game of the new league year. The season's first month of play ends on November 29, when the Knights will welcome home alumnae turned coaches Abby Downard and Aliyah Evans and their IU-Southeast team.

Crossroads League games against Goshen and Mount Vernon will headline the team's first week of December. The remainder of the 2025 calendar year will feature four non-conference games, including a road trip to Rio Grande and a flight to the desert, with Marian taking on Arizona Christian and Rocky Mountain in the Catcus Classic. Marian will ring in the New Year on December 30, hosting Ohio Christian. 

The stretch run of Crossroads League games will resume on January 3 when the Knights travel to Taylor. The first half of league play will conclude on January 17 with a road trip to Huntington, while the second half will start at home against Bethel on January 24. In between the sequence of early January games, the first rematch of the 2025 Crossroads League Tournament Championship against Indiana Wesleyan will be played in Marion on January 14.

The Knights play four of their final six games at home, and end the regular season with consecutive home games against Indiana Wesleyan and Huntington. 



The Crossroads League Tournament will begin on February 24, with the championship game to be played on March 2. The NAIA Tournament First Round is scheduled to tip on March 13, with Marian aiming to host the tournament for the sixth consecutive year. The national tournament will then move to Sioux City, Iowa, with the Final Site scheduled to begin play on March 19. 

Official practice for the season begins in mid-September. 

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