Gillian "Boo" Abshire was named assistant women's basketball coach in May of 2018 and begins her seventh season in 2023-24. Abshire was a four-year letterwinner under La Salle head coach Mountain MacGillivray at Quinnipiac and most recently served as a graduate assistant coach at VCU.
La Salle ended the 2021-22 regular season with a 16-12 overall record and a 9-6 performance in the Atlantic 10 The conference mark was the team's best record since the 1996-97 season when the Explorers put together a 12-4 performance in league play. La Salle was seeded No. 5 in the conference to earn an automatic trip to the second round of the A-10 Tournament. The seeding was the highest in program history since the conference combined the East and West with La Salle earning West No. 5 in the 2003-04 season
During the 2019-20 campaign, the Explorers showed vast improvements from year one to two, including the program's best start since 2006 at 6-1. The Blue & Gold more than doubled both its overall (13) and Atlantic 10 (7) win totals in year two. The victory over the Penn State Nittany Lions was La Salle's first over a Power 5 program since November 2015 and first over a Big Ten school since taking down Northwestern in December of 1988. The Explorers also swept Big 5 and A-10 rival Saint Joseph's for the first time ever. A gritty win over the Hawks inside Hagan Arena was the first since 1998.
In the same season, Kate Hill, who worked directly with Asbshire, finished fifth in the country in assist to turnover ratio at 2.95.
Abshire started at point guard throughout her four-year career with the Bobcats, leading the team to a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. A native of Washington, D.C., Abshire played and started in 134 contests as Quinnipiac compiled an overall record of 84-30 (.737 winning percentage) and an impressive 65-11 (.855) mark in league play during her time with the program.
As a sophomore, the Bobcats went a perfect 18-0 in Northeast Conference play and earned the league's tournament championship and subsequent NCAA Tournament bid with a resounding win over Saint Francis U., 72-33.
Two years later, Abshire was a Second Team All-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference selection, shooting a career-best 40.7 percent from three-point range. The Bobcats ran through the MAAC with a perfect 20-0 record and once again advanced to the NCAA Tournament. Quinnipiac's all-time leader in career assists with 704, Abshire was a superior distributor for QU and set an NCAA single-season record for assist-to-turnover ratio as a senior (4.15).
Upon graduation, Abshire played professionally for two years in Denmark where she won the Danish national title with Virum GoDream. She returned to the United States and earned her master's degree at the VCU Center for Sports Leadership.
