City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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PHILADELPHIA — The only drifting white noise that early in the morning was the beep, beep, beep of a sanitation truck picking up trash on campus. Otherwise, darkness was her friend. Molly Masciantonio would make her way over to the Holy Family gym, fumbling through her pockets for the gym key she was given in the early-morning dust.

It was a usual occurrence. Just the Archbishop Carroll three-time, all-Catholic League guard and a basketball, the two of them keeping each other company as Masciantonio worked on the minutia of her game.

Molly had no problem calling her older twin sister, Kate, that early, 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, letting big sis know that little sis was continuing to work on fulfilling her aspirations as a Division I player.

It didn’t take long for that to happen—a year. It didn’t take long after that for Molly to mature into an impact player, as the La Salle Explorers’ starting point guard.

In La Salle’s 74-65 Atlantic-10 Conference victory over visiting George Washington at Tom Gola Arena on Saturday, Molly enjoyed a typical Molly Masciantonio game — doing the dirty work, causing chaos with her long reach.

Relying on her ability to anticipate, she’s the world’s largest blonde gnat, always putting out a disruptive hand somewhere that knocks away a pass, blocks a shot or redirects a rebound to a teammate or to herself.

She hit the court five times, scrambling for loose balls, diving for deflected passes, diving to make a play. She also sunk three of four free throws to seal the Explorers’ win.

Molly’s first week on campus at Holy Family the athletic department gave her a key to the gym. She called her dad, James, at midnight, exclaiming, “Dad, you’ll never believe it, they gave me a key to the gym!”

James jokes Molly’s court foresight comes from his hockey background. Everything else comes from her mother, Susanne, who played at West Catholic and who was instrumental in getting her twin daughters involved in the game she loved.

It was Kate who honed the early portion of her sister’s game. Though an hour older, it seemed Kate was much older than her baby sister Molly.

“It is an hour, and I do feel much older than Molly, but I love watching her play,” Kate said. “I do look over her like a mother hen. I definitely feel like that about her. Molly would call me all of the time about being a Division I player. She would work out every day with the shooting gun, and when she got the call from Mount (MacGillivray, La Salle’s head coach since April 2018), the whole family cried our eyes out, we were so proud of her.

“My sister plays with so much heart and she genuinely loves playing the game. I used to beat Molly all of the time, but Molly started beating me freshman year in high school. She got better and I stayed the same.”

What makes Molly special is her hands and arm length. They’re large for her 5-foot-10 height.

“Recently, I’m looking to be more aggressive on offense, and it was Kate who helped bring that out of me,” said Molly, who will have another year of eligibility, so she will be able to complete her graduate degree in business. “I want to distribute more, and be there for my teammates. I want to keep everyone patient and focused.

Masciantonio (above) was a three-time All-Catholic selection in her years at Archbishop Carroll. (Photo: Jack Verdeur/CoBL)

“My mom had good basketball skills, my dad was athletic, so I’m able to say I got a little from both of them. My dream was always to play D-I basketball. I wanted to go to a school that wanted me, and the summer before my senior year, I didn’t have a good AAU season.

“There were a lot of schools that gave up on me. I wanted to stay close to home, and Holy Family was perfect. I never gave up on myself, and I played well enough to where I thought about moving up.”

Molly has gotten better each season that she’s played. Three years ago, she just wanted to play basketball. She never saw this coming.

Once MacGillivray saw Molly’s name in the transfer portal, he jumped. This came before the 2021 NCAA rule change allowing student/athletes to change schools using the portal once without sitting out a year after the transfer. So, Molly had to sit a year by making the move up from Division II Holy Family to D-I La Salle, though gained a season when the NCAA declared the 2020-2021 season was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing student/athletes to get six years to compete in four (or, in many cases, five) full seasons of their sport in college.

“Molly is about extra effort and she loves every part of being on a team, and playing basketball. She comes every day excited to be here, and it’s contagious,” said MacGillivray, a long-time hoops fixture in the Philadelphia area and former Carroll and Quinnipiac assistant coach. “Molly plays with a lot of joy and effort. In her first year here, we got swipe-backs, allowing everyone access to the gym.

“We were interested in Molly when I was at Quinnipiac. When I got the job here in the spring (of 2018), I didn’t know whether or not she was a good fit. I encouraged her to take the Holy Family offer. I didn’t want to bring a local kid like Molly in, because I was unsure what we had here and I didn’t know if it would work.

“I’m kicking myself now in hindsight. Molly had a great year the one year at Holy Family, and I saw her name in the transfer portal, we made a move. She’s proven she belongs. If she was qualified (for games played), she would be among the best in the nation in turnover ratio.”

After averaging 13.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per game as a freshman at Holy Family, she’s averaged 6.9 points, 2.7 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 68 games at La Salle, starting 50 of them. The last two seasons she’s averaged more than 4.5 assists, her assist-to-turnover ratio more than 2.7:1. She’s only turned it over 16 times in 14 games this season.

It was not lost on MacGillivray the little things Molly does well. The tipped passes, seeing and creating for her teammates, the disruption she causes with her wingspan, it never shows on a stat sheet, but sharp coaches like MacGillivray notice.

She projects taller than 5-10.

“Molly is much longer than she is tall,” he said. “She’s tall enough for a point guard. Our freshmen point guard get frustrated in practice by her because they’re trying to throw passes under pressure, and she keeps tipping balls.

“She always puts our players in the right position and she projects calm. It’s a different level of calm when she’s on the court for us. This is Molly’s third year here, and she’s the total package, the nicest kid that you’ll ever meet.”

All she needed was a chance.

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.