Stina Almqvist spent the summer playing 3x3 in her native Sweden. It prepared her for a leading role at Penn.

In Stina Almqvist’s bedroom in her hometown of Kinna, Sweden, a poster of her favorite childhood player, Rajon Rondo, taking a buzzer beater hangs on the wall. Nearby is a stuffed trophy case. There’s also a picture of her at age 3 preparing to shoot on a mini hoop over the outstretched arm of her father, Fredrik, who coaches the local pro team, Marbo.

To say that Almqvist always wanted — and was destined — to be a basketball player is quite the understatement.

“I didn’t really have a choice other than play basketball because my dad was coaching the pro team when I was growing up,” she said. “I would always be in the gym watching the older girls do their thing.”

Penn’s 6-foot-1 junior guard and her family share deep ties to the sport. Her older sister, Jonna, plays professionally for Marbo, her father played pro ball for three years before becoming a coach, and her mother, Marie, is a Marbo board member.

And this past summer, Stina and Jonna shared the court, helping Apelsinerna to a second-place finish on the Nocco Sweden 3x3 Tour.

Stina became a tougher, more instinctive player through her summer playing 3x3, and that growth came in handy upon her return to Penn. After star guard Kayla Padilla transferred to USC, Stina has stepped into a significantly bigger role for the Quakers.

This season, Stina is the team’s leading scorer and second-leading rebounder (16.3 points and 6.2 rebounds per game), all while having to switch from the “three” to the “four” position when forward Floor Toonders was sidelined by an ankle injury to start the season. She also has nearly tripled her minutes per game at 32.1.

“She wanted to play more and all of that, but I told her every time, ‘Just do your thing and just trust the process, and your time will come,’ ” Jonna told The Inquirer via Zoom. “And it came.”

As the photo of a 3-year-old Stina suggests, Fredrik Almqvist had his daughters start young. Because there weren’t many basketball hoops in the area, Stina’s father stuck one in their backyard and would work with them on their technique during the summers. The family also talked about basketball every day, which shaped Stina and Jonna’s understanding of the game.

By the age of 16, Stina was playing in the Swedish professional league Svenska Basketligan Dam, where she faced competition not just from the surrounding area, but from WNBA players who played in Sweden during their offseasons.

Almqvist held her own, proving to herself that she could compete at a high level.

“I learned a lot from our Americans at that point, but I also learned that I could compete with these players,” said Stina, who played two seasons in the league before turning 18. “You just have to mature faster.”

Part of that maturation was learning to play tough. Referees tend to swallow their whistles more often in Sweden, and if you want to succeed, you have to be prepared for a more physical style of play.

Though the harder edge has served Almqvist well, it occasionally has done the opposite.

“After my freshman year, I played with the national team all summer, and then I came back and I was fouling everything,” she said jokingly.

Physicality wasn’t the only difference for Stina this summer. Shot clocks in 3x3 are only 12 seconds, which she liked because she didn’t have to think as much.

“In Sweden, she played the one, two, or three position. Now, suddenly, she played the four and five position,” Fredrik said. “So it’s kind of weird, but I think the 3x3 summer did her good in this. She got tougher.”

Almqvist didn’t have outsized expectations about her role at Penn this season, but she has become a focal point for a 6-5 group seeking its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2017.

The rest of the Almqvist family is in Sweden, where nonconference games kept them up until 3 a.m. and later for broadcasts that often had 1 a.m. start times. Half an hour after each game ended, Stina would call them in either a happy or angry mood depending on how the game went.

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Fredrik has been to the U.S. three times during the last two seasons to see his daughter’s games, but each time he has come, she mostly has ridden the bench.

When he travels to Penn for a pair of conference games in February, though, he’ll probably see his daughter on the court a whole lot more.