Fourth-year guard Stina Almqvist of Kinna, Sweden, is the leading scorer (17.7 points per game) and rebounder (7.7 boards per game) on the 15-12 women’s basketball team, and she leads the Ivy League in minutes, logging 36.0 per contest. Five times this season, she has played all 40 minutes; in an overtime loss to UC Irvine on Nov. 21, she registered 44 of 45 minutes.
Penn will be counting on Almqvist’s scoring, rebounding, and extended playing time on Friday as the fourth-seeded Quakers clash with top-seeded Columbia at 4:30 p.m. in the semifinals of the Ivy League Tournament at the Pizzitola Sports Center at Brown University in Rhode Island. The Lions won both regular-season matchups by double digits.
The daughter of a coach of 40-plus years, Almqvist says she has been in the basketball gym “ever since I was born.” Out of all the sports in the world, she says basketball is the most fun to watch—and she watches three to four games per day. She says she enjoys the tactics and planning involved in the game, which allow Davids to slay Goliaths through strategy and scheme.
“There are so many ways you can win,” Almqvist says. “You can be down by seven points with 45 seconds and still come back. It’s never over until it’s over.”
Penn Today sat down with Almqvist, a fourth-year student at the Wharton School, at the Palestra to discuss adjusting to the American game, playing pro ball as a teenager, attending the Eagles parade, scoring 1,000 points, her most memorable game, and what the future holds.
Is basketball popular in Sweden? It’s getting more popular, but soccer is the main sport. But basketball is definitely on the up. We had two guys in the NBA Draft last year [Bobi Klintman and Pelle Larsson] and some girls are doing really well in college right now. Both teams on the senior level just made it to the European Championship. The men’s team made it for the first time in 12 years, so that was huge.
Did you have a favorite team when you were growing up? In Sweden, my favorite team was always the local team. We only had one pro team where I lived, and it was a women’s basketball team. I always looked up to them and all the Americans that came in and out. As far as the NBA, I was a Boston Celtics fan growing up, but now I try to root for Philly as much as I can.
I read that you attended the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade with your family. How was that experience? They were here for one week, so they got to see three of my games, and it lined up with the Super Bowl and the parade. That was the first football game they ever watched. I was like, ‘We have to go to Broad Street!’ I don’t think they really understood what it was going to be like, and then they heard the Eagles chant once and they got so happy about it. I said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to hear this a thousand more times.’ They really came here during the best week to be here.
Is the American game different from the Swedish game? I would say so, for sure. I played in the Swedish Pro League before coming here and they play with the FIBA rules, so the game over there is way faster and that allows you to score way more points. You have the 24-14 shot clock, so once you shoot there and get the offensive rebound, you only have 14 seconds to score as opposed to 20. You basically have to shoot at the first best opportunity you get. I think they’re always trying to evolve the game to be faster over there. But here, I would say there are more skilled players. You can never really leave anyone open.
Did you have to adjust your game? Yes, for sure. I was playing against really good players. I was playing against WNBA players. I knew I probably could compete on this level, but I think coming here, there were so many other things to adjust to, not only just basketball. I had to adjust to everything in general because everything was different when you come here. The clock is different. The unit of temperature is different. The unit of measurement is different. Coach would say, ‘Stina, you gotta be six feet away from this,’ and I would say, ‘I don’t know what a foot is.’ I think there was a lot of confusion in the beginning. But an opportunity opened up for me when I was a junior with great players graduating and I think I was ready for it by then.
How old were you when you played professionally in Sweden? I played when I was 16, 17, and 18 for the pro team there.
Do you think that helped to prepare you to play in college? Definitely, because we would always have like two or three Americans per team, and they would tell me what to expect. I would also play against these players that I would later see go into the WNBA or had been a part of it before.
You lead the Ivy League with 36 minutes per game. How do you condition yourself to play almost the entire game? I think our coaches have been doing a great job of incorporating a lot of conditioning into our practice. I really emphasized conditioning over the summer, and that’s pretty much all we do in the preseason. I think the most important part is to keep doing it throughout the season. I think conditioning is definitely something you have to always continue to work on, which we are doing. I’m always trying to stay in the best shape as possible. But the U.S. has a lot of media timeouts, so I get to rest.
On Feb. 25 against Brown at the Palestra, you became only the 26th player in program history to score 1,000 points. How did it feel to reach the milestone? It meant a lot because I got to do it at home and there were a lot of people that I knew in the audience. My family actually timed it in perfectly, so they got to see it; that was the last game before they left. It was nice to celebrate with them. Coming into Penn and especially after those two years where I didn’t really play much at all, I didn’t even think it was possible. I saw our great players like Kayla Padilla and Jordan Obi reaching that milestone so being a part of what they accomplished here at Penn is really special.
Do you have a most memorable game? I feel like I have a lot, but definitely our Senior Night at home last year when we clinched the Ivy League Tournament against Harvard. We needed to win or we knew we weren’t going to make the tournament. I think that’s one of the best basketball games we played. Celebrating it with the seniors we had last year and celebrating it as a team was huge. At the end of last year, we really played our best basketball, and I’m seeing similar patterns now. We struggled a lot in the beginning of the Ivy season and have really come together now towards the end.
What are your plans after graduation? I definitely want to keep playing basketball so I’m not really taking the normal Penn route that other Wharton people do. I actually do have an internship in Sweden in finance this summer, so I’m trying to, as much as I can, keep both of my careers going. But since our season is going pretty well, I’m trying to play somewhere in Europe. I know that there are some Swedish teams that would take me, but right now I’m looking more to see if there’s any other league that would take me.
