La Salle’s Molly Masciantonio embraces leadership role in her final year of college basketball
The sixth-year starting point guard will be a key veteran for a La Salle group that had nine transfers join the team this offseason.
Molly Masciantonio’s easy decision was a difficult one.
La Salle’s starting point guard for the last two years, a former star at Archbishop Carroll, had the option to come back for a sixth year of college basketball. Wanting to keep playing, that was the easy part.
“I love college basketball, I love the team, I love the coaches,” Masciantonio said. “Having that last year, of course I’m going to take it — You only get [these] college years once, and I’m lucky enough to have an extra year.”
But the Explorers had to replace almost their entire rotation from a year ago and start from scratch with coach Mountain MacGillivray and his staff leaning on the transfer portal this offseason. Masciantonio’s new teammates were mostly an unknown.
“She was like, ‘Should I even come back? Should I just get started and do what’s next?’” MacGillivray said. “And obviously that decision was hers, but we just painted the picture, you have an opportunity to make this culture and environment exactly what you want because it’s going to be brand new.”
So Masciantonio stayed.
“[MacGillivray] basically was like, ‘Trust me,’” Masciantonio said. “‘Trust in me that I will get girls around you and keep helping you and building you.’
“I was a little skeptical when I found out a lot of girls were leaving, but I trusted the coaches and I knew that they had a goal and how they recruit people. I trusted them.”
Fast-forward to the fall, Masciantonio is by far the most experienced member of an Explorers roster with nine new faces. Seven of the top eight scorers from last season departed from the program, including the entire rotation that played more than 10 minutes per game, except Masciantonio.
She’s not the only graduate student on the team, though. Transfers Makayla Miller (Ouachita Baptist) and Jolene Armendariz (San Francisco State) join the group with plenty of Division II experience, but with nine newcomers, seven underclassmen, and five freshmen, her voice certainly carries more weight.
“I feel like the grandma on the team,” Masciantonio said, laughing. “The leadership role is a lot different from when I first got here.”
Masciantonio is the right kind of player to get everybody on the same page. The nation’s leader in assist-to-turnover ratio a year ago (4.72:1) was seventh in the Atlantic 10 in assists per game (4.5) and had only 25 turnovers all season.
And she has done what she can to get the team together off the court, like hosting a team dinner at the apartment she shares with several of the other older members of the program. But MacGillivray noted her on-court style makes the transition easier as well.
» READ MORE: La Salle’s Molly Masciantonio is about making memories and good vibes on the court
“She’s a pass-first point guard, so when that girl’s always giving you the ball, you feel good about her, too,” he added. “She really knows how to bring the group together.”
It doesn’t hurt that Masciantonio also took the path that several of her new teammates took, making the D-II to D-I transition seamlessly after starting off her college career at Holy Family. MacGillivray said he used her success as selling points to bring in the pair of transfers this spring.
Masciantonio said she hasn’t talked about the move with Miller or Armendariz, but she said it’s clear the impact they want to have from their energy in practice.
“The girls who are coming up from JUCO and Division II, you can see the fight in them because they’re grateful to be here,” Masciantonio said. “You see a lot of Division I hoopers that have been [at that level] for years that get complacent and stuff. It’s really nice having them be grateful and fight every day to be here, and you can tell that in practice.”
There’s much to be explored about the Explorers this year. The on-court production will be a mystery, besides Masciantonio playing a big role.
Masciantonio’s going to be counted on not just to pass but to score. MacGillivray knows she needs to improve on her career marks of 28.8% shooting from three-point range while averaging 6.8 points — perhaps not doubling it, but getting into double figures for the first time as a D-I ballplayer.
“I’m definitely going to be doing that more this year,” she said. “I know that to help the team win I have to score more and look for myself. I am a shooter at the end of the day, too. I just have to be confident with my shot.”
This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.