City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2022-23 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 9. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season click here)
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Kayla Spruill could feel a shift in the La Salle women’s basketball program early on last season.

A different energy. A different outlook. Whatever you want to call it, something had changed from her first three seasons on Olney.

It wasn’t just a feeling. 

La Salle’s on-court product last season was the best in Spruill’s career. The Explorers broke a streak of four consecutive losing seasons with a 16-12 mark in 2021-22

“What really showed that we were different was when we would lose games because losing wasn’t really something that was expected for us anymore,” the graduate forward said. “We were winning games. We were expected to win. 

“That’s one of the most positive things that’s probably come out of everything we’ve been through the last five years is that now losing isn’t really an option for us anymore.”

The beginning of Spruill’s career, which coincided with the arrival of fifth-year coach Mountain MacGillivray, was a 6-25 campaign for the Explorers that saw them go 3-13 in the A-10. Then came a 13-17 (7-9 A-10) season in 2019-20 and a 12-14 (7-10) campaign in 2020-21.

Last season’s 16-12 record and 9-6 mark in the conference — the team’s best ever finish in the conference — has the Explorers expecting even more this season. They want to compete for a conference title, something that’s rarely been a realistic preseason aspiration in the program's history.

“It’s just really exciting because starting from the beginning when I first got here it was like, our goal is to win a few games,” Spruill said, “and a championship wasn’t really something that everybody was like, ‘Yea. You guys can do it.’ Now, we’re expected to do really well and a championship is something that everyone expects us to do.”

Graduate guard Molly Masciantonio began her career at Holy Family before transferring to La Salle in 2019-20. She sat out her first season on campus but was around to see the early stages of the program’s development under MacGillivray before getting out on the floor in 2020-21.

Masciantonio, a two-year starter, and Spruill, a three-year starter and first team all-conference player, are the leaders of a veteran Explorers group in 2022-23.

“When I came in, it was a lot of the rebuilding aspect,” Masiantonio said. “Now, we’re getting to the years where it’s like we’re the oldest and stuff. It’s really exciting to see how far we came but we can obviously do a lot better and our team is capable of a lot this year.”

The pair of graduate players have been instrumental in carrying out the vision MacGillivray had when he took over the program in 2018.

“A lot of credit goes to (Molly and Kayla) and their acknowledgement of the opportunity that they have,” MacGillivray said. “They show appreciation and gratitude and it kind of rubs off on everybody else. 

“We’re trying to get them more comfortable challenging their teammates more, but they’ve set thes standar of, ‘This is a blessing that we get to do this.’ Appreciate it, put the time in and enjoy the moments. They’ve done that and everybody’s kind of followed along.”

All five starters are back from last season as Masciantonio (6.9 ppg, 4.5 apg, 3.4 rpg), Spruill (15.9 ppg, 7.1 rpg), senior guard Claire Jacobs (10.3 ppg, 3.2 rpg), junior guard Jaye Haynes (8.1 ppg, 3.3 rpg) and senior guard Amy Jacobs (5.8 ppg, 2.6 rpg) all return after combing for 138 starts out of a possible 140.

Senior forward Gabby Crawford (11.5 ppg, 5.3 rpg) played in 16 games last season and should be an even bigger factor in her second season after transferring from Morehead State. Senior forward Jordon Lewis (4.4 ppg) is one of only two other bench players who averaged more than nine minutes per game (13.9). The lone key departure is guard Kenya Cote-Lysisus (3.1 ppg, 1.8 rpg), who averaged 17.7 minutes off the bench last season.

“I think this year the bar’s exceptionally high because there’s so many people back and we’re expected to do a lot more than we did in previous years,” Spruill said. “I think the bar is very high, but I think because of the team that we have we’ll be able to even exceed the expectations.”

La Salle finished second in the Atlantic 10 Preseason Poll behind last season’s conference tournament champion UMass, the unanimous favorite.

It will be different this season for the Explorers as they will enter most of the games on their conference schedule as the team to beat rather than an underdog. As that started to take place last season, MacGillivray said there were quite a few winnable games the Explorers wasted. 

They took down some heavy hitters like but also dropped some contests to teams who finished at the bottom of the conference standings.

“Last year, we didn’t go into the season thinking that we were the hunted by any stretch,” MacGillivray said. “We went into the season thinking we could carve out as many wins as we could and see if we can get better. But as the season progressed we started to notice that we were expected to win a lot more games than this group of players has ever been expected to win at La Salle and we didn’t handle that very well.

“We identified a weakness in us that we struggle with … and that’s what we’re going to find out. Can we handle the expectation of being good? I think they can. I think they’re up to the task. We’ve done a lot of work to get ready for that.”

There’s still work left to be done, but the raised expectations this season highlight the strides the Explorers have made as a group during Masciantonio’s and Spruill’s careers. 

“It feels really good because coming in your first year here you make a relationship that will literally last a long time and to stay with these girls it just kind of makes us want to win more,” Masciantonio said. “Especially us being our couple last years, we really want to win together as teammates.”

They wouldn’t have chosen another place to do it at.

“It just says a lot about the staff and the people that we have here that people want to stick around for the entire time,” Spruill said. “Because there are a lot of girls, especially ones I knew that I played with in AAU that have probably transferred to three different schools. They’re like, ‘Yea I just can’t seem to find a program that fits me.’ I think we were both really lucky on our first try to find programs that we really liked.”