OVER THERE
Villanova’s Louin, a star in Europe, waiting to resume pro career overseas
Alex Louin still marvels at how far an orange ball has taken her.
An all-state performer at Mount Saint Joseph Academy and an All BigEast standout at Villanova, Louin’s basketball career has continued overseas. With her third year playing professionally on hold, Louin is eager to get back on the court.
Basketball has come a long way in that time.
“The way I handle things now, even compared to my first season in Luxembourg, is vastly different,” Louin said recently. “It’s almost like they throw you in the water and you have to learn to swim. The overseas life is not for everyone, there’s a ton of players who go over for one season and they’re done.
“There’s a reason for that: It’s dark, it’s lonely, it can be depressing, it’s a lot of things, but if you can push through that, it’s also rewarding.”
Louin is in her second season with Grengewald Hostert, a club in Luxembourg, nestled between Germany, France and Belgium. She spent her first pro season with the club, helping it win a Total League title, before spending last season with ToPo Helsinki in Finland, where she led the Koriisliga in scoring.
Louin returned to Luxembourg in 2020, but the Total League went on hiatus due to COVID-19 in late October, though Grengewald returned to EuroCup qualifying in December. Currently back in her hometown of Doylestown, Louin is holding out hope the league will resume and her team can defend its title.
“My teammates have made it easy to make the adjustment,” Louin said. “There’s never been a time where I felt that I was invested and they weren’t. There’s a mutual respect that we’re all going to come together and improve as a team. Having won a championship two seasons ago, it makes it easier to work toward that goal again.”
Playing overseas isn’t an overly glamorous or easy lifestyle for most basketball players, but Louin had the right tutelage to succeed. Coming from the highly successful Philadelphia Belles, Louin’s high school and college coaches imparted plenty of lessons she still uses. At the Mount, Louin played under coach John Miller, where she surpassed 1,000 points, made All-AACA three times, twice earned league MVP honors, served as a three-year captain, won a District 1 title and earned all-state honors.
At Villanova, Louin became a key cog for coach Harry Perretta. The 6-foot guard made the Big East All-Rookie team, was Honorable Mention AllBig East the next two seasons and second team All-Big East as senior, where she led the Wildcats in scoring and finished with 1,432 career points. Louin thrived in Perretta’s offense and has carried the readand-react mentality overseas, where she averaged more than 20 points in two full seasons.
“He’s a basketball genius, he has a great reputation but you don’t understand the level of it until you play under him,” Louin said of Perretta. “He taught me so much in regards to the different cuts and the reads you have to make, reading the defense and creating easier shots off of that. The plays and some of the reads he taught me, I still use them.”
Louin’s pro pursuit began as a senior, when the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun extended an invitation to the draft combine. While she didn’t get drafted, she held her own and started looking overseas.
In December 2018, Louin got her first crack with Grengewald. Joining late in the season wasn’t a detriment, Louin averaging 23.2 points in 20 games, capped by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to win the league championship.
The Total League, like most European leagues, limit the amount of American players per team. Louin, one of Grengewald’s allotted two Americans, had help adjusting thanks to teammate Samantha Cooper, who arrived in August after a career at Fairfield University.
“It was also her first year playing professionally, but she knew the ins and outs so we had a great relationship,” Louin said. “Since I’ve started playing overseas, all my teammates have spoken some English but there’s always that looming language barrier. It’s something you don’t think about but you have to work to form those relationships so your team is close as it can be and that translates to open communication and trusting your teammates.”
In chasing her professional goal, Louin knew she was taking a leap of faith. Even in college, she was never far from home. Luxembourg was a complete departure.
Having second thoughts or doubts was natural, but Louin learned quickly she couldn’t dwell on them.
“Those thoughts are in the back of your head every day,” Louin said. “In Finland, the sun was setting at three o’clock, it’s dark and it’s cold and there’s always that voice in the back of your head asking ‘ what am I doing here?’ Ultimately it’s the relationships with your team and your coaches that help push you through the season. If you think about it like ‘I’m going to be here the next seven months,’ it affects you and you can’t think that way, you have to take it day by day and focus on the small victories as much as the big ones.”
After the championship season, an opportunity came from Torpan Pojat (ToPo) in Helsinki, just the environment Louin was looking for. This time the only American on her team, she again had to adapt to a new culture and country without speaking the native language.
“Finland was a tough transition,” Louin said. “In Luxembourg, everyone was very friendly and wanted to help you whereas in Finland, the people are little more stoic and reserved and as the only American there, I lived on my own and kind of had to figure everything out on my own within a culture that wasn’t very inviting.”
Louin was a force, aver
“In Finland, the sun was setting at three o’clock, it’s dark and it’s cold and there’s always that voice in the back of your head asking ‘what am I doing here?’” — Villanova’s Alex Louin on playing pro basketball in Finland
aging 28 points and 10.3 rebounds in 22 games. On top of leading the league in scoring, Louin was named the Korisliiga Guard of the Year and was a First Team AllFinnish League and All-Import team selection.
Louin attributed her productivity to her surroundings.
“There was nothing else for me to do other than workout,” Louin said. “I had a gym membership with 24-hour access and it was right next to the apartment building I was staying in. Jimmy Butler, I think a couple summers ago, I remember reading he locked himself away without wifi and TV, and I had access to those things but it made me think about that.
“I kind of channeled my inner Jimmy Butler I guess and spent a lot of time in the gym trying to get better.”
Though thankful for that experience, when it came time to find a home for this season, Louin looked back to Luxembourg. With COVID-19 descending last spring, that familiarity and comfort was critical in Louin’s next step.
She got off to another good start, averaging close to 23 ppg before the country went on lockdown and the season went on hold. With no timeline to restart and no access to the club’s facilities, Louin again had to adapt.
“We ended up bringing a lot of the gym equipment into our apartment,” Louin said. “It was a scene, we were lugging these benches and weights up the stairs; we had a full home gym in our living room. I tried to get them to let us bring a treadmill into our apartment, too but ultimately failed at that.”
Eventually, the team found a gym in Germany it could drive to for practices. Six weeks after the Total League suspension, Grengewald competed in a EuroCup qualifier. Louin returned home shortly after but has tried to remain optimistic the season will resume.
However it plays out, Louin said she aims to play the 202021 season. She’s on track to graduate with her MBA this spring and has worked as a team and individual trainer during her offseasons.
Basketball has taken Louin places she never expected and provided lessons she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else. From a championship gamewinning shot in a gym in Luxembourg to a sunset on the Rhine River, it’s a journey she hopes doesn’t end anytime soon.
“It gives you perspective,” Louin said. “I come from Doylestown, a small little town in Pennsylvania and seeing these major cities and other countries, you get perspective that there’s so much more out there and there’s so much you can do if you’re willing to take the chance.”