TEMPE — Martina Fantini’s journey to Arizona State started with a simple phone call.
Just a few months ago, ASU’s freshman center was sitting at home in Italy, assessing where she would pursue her basketball future. The Florence, Italy, native had offers from schools like Wake Forest and Idaho, and she could’ve even opted to stay in Europe.
But a phone call from newly-appointed ASU women’s basketball coach Molly Miller and her staff changed her plans.
“Molly transmitted so much energy,” Fantini said in an interview conducted in Italian, reflecting on her first contact with Miller. “It was clearly understood, even when talking to her and the other staff members, that this energy would then be transformed into energy on the court. So I was very excited, and I really wanted to be part of this program, because it seemed like a winning program.”
Fantini didn’t know anything or anybody in Tempe. In fact, the only way of exploring the school was through virtual tours via FaceTime calls from Miller herself.
Still, three months before preseason camp began, she decided to become a Sun Devil.
“I made a blind choice, trusting the staff,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier with the choice. I didn’t know anybody, so I just went for it.”
Thus began her new life in Tempe. She’s one of the 10 newcomers for the Maroon and Gold in 2025, as Miller leads a new chapter for the program. The team has already impressed early in the season season, carving out an 8-0 start, which places it two wins shy of achieving its best start in program history.
The 6-foot-3 center has appeared in every game so far — coming off the bench in all eight — recently recording a season-high tally of nine rebounds in an 81-54 win over Utah Tech.
Born in Florence, Fantini left home at the age of 13 to join Ragusa in Italy before signing for Basket Roma. During her tenure in the capital, she helped the team win two national championships with the U17 and U19 teams, while also winning promotion to Serie A2 with the senior squad. Fantini was selected as the tournament’s best five lineup after defeating Costa Masnaga during the U19 national championship in 2023.
Last season, she played in the highest level of women’s professional basketball in Italy, Serie A1. Suiting up for Faenza, she played 22 games for the club while averaging 1.9 points and three rebounds a game. Faenza qualified for the championship playoffs as the No. 7 seed, but lost in the quarterfinals to Reyer Venezia.
Over an ocean away, her talents caught the attention of Miller, who was in the midst of a major offseason overhaul in her first year in Tempe.
“We’re bringing in not only good basketball players, but we want to bring in high character individuals to start this thing off the right way,” Miller said, recalling her first encounter with Fantini. “The first conversation I had, I’m like, ‘She is what we want to stand for.’ She was respectful, she was kind, she was inquisitive, asked all the right questions.
“And I’m like, ‘OK, this is a no-brainer for us,’”
Fantini arrived in the desert in mid-August after representing Italy in the 2025 FIBA U20 Women’s EuroBasket tournament. She appeared in all seven contests and started in two, including one where she tallied 16 points and eight rebounds in the opener against Poland. The Italians secured the bronze medal after defeating Sweden in the third-place game.
The center also represented her country in the 2022 and 2023 editions of the FIBA U18 Women’s European Championship.
It’s an experience that she never takes for granted.
“To play for my country is always a great honor,” Fantini said. “I’ve had the opportunity to do it more often in the past summers.
“It’s a fantastic experience because you play against the best players in Europe, and the level of play is very high. The journey has been very educational since you are playing against a very high level.”
But the differences — both on and off the court — between European and American basketball made the transition challenging for Fantini. Not only was the school campus bigger, but the facilities and travel days were also noticeably different and longer than those in Europe.
Last season, while with Faenza, one of the club’s furthest road trips was to Salerno, about 375 miles away — a six-and-a-half-hour drive by car. It was one of the longest road trips of the year. Meanwhile, in the U.S., a 6-hour drive from Tempe to San Diego, which the squad made a few weeks ago, will end up being a standard travel for the Sun Devils this season.
Fantini recognizes the obstacles, but appreciates how ASU does its best to comfort its players through a long season of travel and practice sessions intertwined between games. However, it can be a different story back home.
“In Italy, unfortunately, it’s not possible to do these things,” she said. “The road games are more of a physical sacrifice, often for teams with smaller budgets. So you’re playing a game with a disadvantage.
“But I had a really great time. It was a great experience, we had fun, and I’m very happy (with it).”
On the court, Fantini is growing into Miller’s defensive rotation. Miller recently led GCU to the program’s first NCAA Tournament appearance while also winning the WAC championship in 2025. The coach finished her tenure with a 117-38 record with the Lopes.
“Her coaching style is very dynamic,” Fantini said of Miller’s playing style. “She wants us to play as a team, to control the ball, and there’s a lot of attention to defense, which I really like. She also has his own way of teaching, even the smallest things, and his own sayings, which I really like because I think that it brings a sense of belonging to the program and a sense of unity. I feel like we’re a single entity.”
And so far, Fantini is becoming everything a coach could dream of: having a coachable player.
“Here’s what I love about her: She will let me coach her,” Miller said. “And sometimes freshmen don’t get coached as hard as I’m coaching Martina. And she wants that because she wants to be there.”
ASU hopes to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2018-19 season. It’s an objective on everyone’s minds, including Fantini’s. But for now, playing her first of four years in Tempe, the center wants to soak it all in and continue to write her American basketball journey one step at a time.
A lot can happen in four years, so Fantini doesn’t want to get too far ahead. After all, life can change in the blink of an eye.
In her case, a single phone call.
“It’s my first year, so I want to absorb everything (and) all the advice and all the corrections that I’ve had luckily from the coaching staff,” Fantini said.
“I hope to have the possibility and privilege to continue to work in this program.”
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