Laura Ziegler is grateful she saw the signs that brought her to St. Joseph’s. And so are the Hawks.

Laura Ziegler ventured from Denmark across the Atlantic Ocean for a recruiting trip to three U.S. college basketball programs and immediately clocked a positive “gut feeling” while walking around the St. Joseph’s campus.

Then, when she was on her way to dinner while visiting another school, she looked out the car window and noticed a St. Joe’s road sign.

“This is literally a sign,” she told herself.

In the three seasons since, Ziegler has developed into one of the Atlantic 10’s most versatile and dynamic players. This season, she’s averaging 17.5 points, 10.4 rebounds, and 4.1 assists in 32 games and is a finalist for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Award.

She has evolved from an always dangerous perimeter threat to a player who uses her 6-foot-2 frame to her advantage in a quest to become, in coach Cindy Griffin’s words, unguardable.

She has racked up 39 career double-doubles, the second-most in program history with another season left after this. On Feb. 9, she scored a program-record 43 points — and nearly outscored the Hawks’ opponent, Loyola Chicago by herself. And she recently made national highlight reels after hitting a buzzer-beater to upset top-seeded Richmond in the A-10 tournament semifinal.

Ziegler is a huge reason St. Joe’s was on the bubble to make its first NCAA Tournament since 2014, and why the Hawks are now a No. 1 seed in the WBIT that begins with a Thursday first-round matchup against the University of Albany at Hagan Arena.

Ziegler’s impact is no surprise to those who have witnessed her healthy obsession with the game, a blend of skill, work ethic, and basketball IQ that leaves Hawks teammates and coaches chuckling and baffled. And her connection to the program has only deepened, creating a home away from home that has become increasingly rare for athletes in the changing landscape of college sports.

In other words, the sign was correct.

“I wanted to go somewhere,” Zielger recently told The Inquirer, “that when I have my worst day, I’m so far away, and my parents aren’t answering my phone call, that I still wanted to be there and I don’t regret that decision because I’m surrounded by so many great people. The last three years have been great, basketball-wise, but it all comes down to the relationships and how they just make me grow as a person, as a player.

“I get challenged every day, [with] basketball, but also just to keep growing your mindset and your mentality. It’s just been full of so many experiences that I’m always going to take with me.”

Ziegler was not always basketball-focused. Quite the opposite, in fact.

She jokes that the relationship between her parents, Ronnie and Dorthe, is straight out of the movie Love & Basketball because they met and fell in love while playing the game in their home country. And though Laura never considered herself a rebellious kid in the Copenhagen suburb of Herlev, she initially resisted partaking in their sport of choice.

So she tried — but never connected with — soccer, swimming, and horseback riding. Then when she finally went to her first basketball practice at age 10, she begrudgingly admitted that Mom and Dad were right.

“I loved it,” she said, noting that it helped her crack her “very introverted” childhood personality.

Loved it so much that she became “nerdy” about the game.

First, she’d stick around to watch others play in whatever gym she occupied to develop point guard and outside shooting skills, even at her height. It continued while traveling to games around Copenhagen with her dad or while studying WNBA stars with her similar frame, such as Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne.

She was inspired by local star Sarah Mortensen, who came home to speak about her college experiences at Miami and Villanova. She put together her own highlight reel for a European database, hoping U.S. coaches would discover her.

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St. Joe’s assistant Katie Kuester, who is in charge of the program’s international recruiting efforts, did.

“You’re talking about a kid that was 6-2, bringing up the basketball, shooting a three off a flare screen, doing a spin move and finishing in the paint,” Kuester recently told The Inquirer.

Kuester first saw Ziegler play in person at the 2019 FIBA U18 Division B European championships in North Macedonia, where Ziegler was one of Denmark’s younger players and slotted behind multiple teammates bound for power-conference U.S. college programs. Still, the coach and player hit it off and continued to build their relationship even as the world descended into the COVID-19 pandemic, which aligned with Ziegler’s prime recruiting window.

Griffin agreed that Ziegler’s ability to space the floor would immediately fit the Hawks’ inside-outside style of play, and pair well with fellow post player and budding standout Talya Brugler. Ziegler also continued to gain international experience, which included playing for IK Eos Lund in Sweden’s highest league in 2021-22.

Then came Ziegler’s campus visits — and that sign — which led to her officially joining the program in April 2022. Still, she needed to adjust when she first arrived.

Though Ziegler had been learning English since first grade, she initially was quiet in group conversations because “you listen in English, then you translate it in Danish in your brain, then you know what you’re going to say in Danish, then you translate into English, and by that point, 30 seconds went by and we’re already on a new topic.”

She spent many late nights with Brugler, now her suitemate, talking through games and homesickness while eating Brugler’s mom’s “dirt” pudding.

One time when Brugler wondered why her teammate was not home, Ziegler shared that she had coaxed athletes from other sports into rebounding for her at the practice facility. And Ziegler was downright giddy when she learned she could immediately dissect practice film — something she had never had access to before — and games with Kuester while her decision-making (and emotions) were still fresh in her brain. Those sessions were what crystallized for Kuester, who played at St. Joe’s from 2008 to 2012 before becoming an assistant coach in 2018, that Ziegler’s “IQ and awareness of the game is unlike anyone I’ve ever been around.”

“I can really analyze it,” Ziegler said, “and be like, ‘Oh is that’s what really happened, the perspective I have of it right now?’”

Ziegler was named the A-10’s rookie of the year in 2023 after averaging 11.8 points and 8.7 rebounds. Though scoring 22 points in a two-point loss at eventual conference champion Massachusetts that season was her first indicator that she could hang at this level, she self-deprecatingly says she “just shot some threes” as a freshman.

That’s because she needed to develop more of a back-to-the-basket offensive game and reliably guard opposing centers. So she worked in the weight room. She and Kuester studied Maddy Siegrist, the former Villanova star who now plays for the WNBA’s Dallas Wings, as an example of a perimeter player who also could exploit mismatches to score inside.

Griffin highlighted Ziegler’s high release point on her shot, along with her footwork, pace, and timing, as ways she could “beat scouting report defenses” with unpredictability.

“Watching her play in the paint,” Kuester said, “and making drives to the basket, finishing through contact, is something that she really had to buy in and work on. And that’s my favorite part of her game.”

Added Ziegler: “Score every single way you can … not letting the defense know what you’re going to do.”

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That versatility was on display in the Hawks’ March 2 game against Richmond, the team that won the regular-season A-10 title. Ziegler flashed the ability to take feeds inside and score high off the glass, and a quick release on her catch-and-shoot midrange jumper. She grabbed a rebound and immediately brought the ball up the floor on multiple possessions and drove hard to the basket on others. She opened the fourth quarter with a three-pointer.

“[If] Laura shoots it, I’m already running back on defense,” Brugler said. “Because I know that it’s, nine times out of 10, going to go in.”

And some of those shots have been massive. Like a crunch-time three-pointer in last season’s WBIT second-round victory over California. Or the game-tying deep shot in front of Griffin to force overtime in a heartbreaking loss at Utah in November. And in the March 8 rematch against Richmond, when Ziegler dribbled to her left, spun past her defender in the lane, bounced off a teammate, and flipped the ball in at the buzzer to help St. Joe’s advance to the conference tournament final.

“Those are moments that you say she has the courage to take them,” Griffin said, “but she has the skill to make them and the will to want to make them. I think that’s what separates her.”

Ziegler and Kuester are now so close that she has spent the past two Christmases with the coach’s family. Associate head coach Melissa Dunne also recently provided Ziegler with a dash of home, bringing her potato soup that reminded her of one of her mom’s Danish specialties.

And Ziegler’s bond with teammates is clear while watching the Hawks play, when she threw up three fingers when Julia Nyström opened the March 2 game against Richmond with a three-pointer, chest-bumped MacKenzie Smith for altering an early shot inside, and pointed her finger while yelling “right now!” as the Hawks began a fourth-quarter rally.

Still, basketball continues to connect Ziegler to her family an ocean away.

They set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to watch Hawks games. Ronnie surprised her with a visit during St. Joe’s holiday tournament, sending Laura into tears before sleeping on an air mattress on her floor. Both parents were in town over the Super Bowl and waded into the crowd along Broad Street to see Jalen Hurts wave the trophy during the victory parade.

And when her 18-year-old brother Mads’ team stayed at their home during one of his recent tournaments, Dorthe sent Laura a video of the group — at an age that does not typically have the best attention span — locked in on the March 2 St. Joe’s game against Richmond.

“I just sat there and was, like, that means so much,” Ziegler said. “Being here, you want to make your parents proud, and your little brother.”

» READ MORE: Laura Ziegler is becoming an ‘influential’ leader for St. Joe’s. Here’s how. | from 2023

During this break while the Hawks awaited their postseason fate, Ziegler surely stuck to her daily routine.

She often returns to basics, such as one-handed shots, that take her back to workouts with her dad. Then, she begins a 45-minute circuit with a variety of shots that simulate in-game elements, such as coming off a screen or trailing for a three-pointer. She likely also began studying the WBIT field, with Kuester using nonconference opponent Syracuse as an example of a team Ziegler continued to follow in “hyperaware” fashion because she knew it would impact the Hawks’ strength of schedule.

St. Joe’s narrowly missed the Big Dance, but still has the opportunity to win a postseason tournament. The Hawks begin that march on the campus where Ziegler instantly felt that positive gut feeling.

She is grateful she saw the sign. And so are the Hawks.

“She’s the best basketball player I’ve ever played with,” Brugler said. “It’s so much fun to be around her every day.”