Drexel rising senior point guard Frantz Massenat has been playing basketball for as long as he can remember. In fact, scoring his first basket is one of his earliest memories.
He played in an outdoor league in Moody Park in Ewing, N.J., and was in kindergarten when he played in his first organized league.
“I remember it; I don’t know why I do,” Massenat recalls of that first two-pointer. “I was right next to the rim. I remember saying ‘Yes, yes!’ My dad was my coach.”
The Drexel standout grew up hearing stories from his father, who is also named Frantz Massenat. His father and mother were both born in Haiti before settling in New Jersey, where their son was born.
“It is all about our mindset. We have a lot of talent on our team. Now we have to build ourselves back. I think we should be fine.”
— Frantz Massenat
The elder Massenat came to the United States around the age of 5 and played high school basketball and football. He bought a Fisher Price toy court for his son, who enjoyed watching “Space Jam,” a 1996 sports comedy film that featured Michael Jordan.
“I would try to do the moves when I was watching,” says Massenat, who was the pre-season player of the year in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) prior to the 2012-13 season. “I would wear my dad’s shoes while I watched. When I was older, after homework was done, we would go play. We would stay out until 11 p.m. As a kid, I loved playing basketball.”
Massenat was a standout at Trenton Catholic and then headed to Drexel to play for veteran coach Bruiser Flint, who was also a point guard in college.
“He is terrific. His size [at 6-foot-4] bothered us a little,” Towson University basketball coach Pat Skerry said of Massenat after losing to Drexel in CAA play last year. “He was a terrific get for them out of South Jersey.”
Massenat says Flint is a demanding coach. He jokes that Flint’s wrath is normally reserved for his point guard, the quarterback and leader of the team.
In that win over Towson, Massenat had a career-high 25 points, made all 15 free throws and had six assists with just one turnover after a slow start — but Flint still wasn’t fully satisfied with his star guard. “I was on him because he could have done that earlier” in the game, a smiling Flint said after the win.
“The guys he is the toughest on become coaches,” says Massenat, noting that former Drexel guard Bashir Mason is now the head coach at Wagner College on Staten Island.
Last season, Massenat led the Dragons in minutes played (35.5 per game) and assists (131) and was second among regulars in scoring at 14.7 per outing.
But after being picked to win the CAA title in a pre-season poll, Drexel was 13-18 overall and 9-9 in league play, good for seventh place.
“Looking back, it teaches a lot: Don’t feed into the hype. Don’t take too much for granted. We thought we were going to be good,” he says.
Massenat believes this coming season will be different. “It is all about our mindset,” he says. “We have a lot of talent on our team. Now we have to build ourselves back. I think we should be fine.”
This summer he has been working on his mid-range jumper (shots 12 to 15 feet from the basket) and the mental side of being a senior leader.
Massenat wants to play pro basketball once he graduates. While the National Basketball Association is his main goal, the affable communications major (he expects to finish a BS in communications with a minor in business in 2014) is willing to go overseas to extend his career.
He was a rising freshman in the summer of 2010 when he went with the Dragons to Turkey for sightseeing and a chance to play foreign teams.
Massenat is well aware that some of his former teammates have played overseas, including Samme Givens, who has been in the Netherlands and France.
“That is my dream, to keep playing after college,” he says. “I just like being around the game.”