Francesca Baldassarre signed with Virginia Tech on Monday. (Nick Brown)

Francesca Baldassarre 
5-9, G
Brindisi, Italy 
Fr. (4 years remaining) 

Virginia Tech women's basketball and Megan Duffy announced the signing of Italian guard Francesca Baldassarre (frahn-CHESS-kah bal-dahs-SAR-ray) on Monday.


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Baldassarre joins the Hokies after spending the 2025-26 season with Battapaglia in Serie A1, Italy's premier women's basketball league. 

The 18-year-old played in 19 contests for the club, averaging 8.9 points and 3.3 rebounds in 28.8 minutes per game. She scored in double figures in eight straight outings, too, highlighted by an 18-point performance vs. BCC Derthona behind 5-for-12 shooting from behind the arc. Over the course of the year, she shot 27-for-103 (26.2%) from 3-point range.

Baldassarre has also represented Italy in four European competitions:

β€’ 2023 U16 Women's Euros: 13.1 ppg, 2.6 rpg
β€’ 2024 U17 Women's World Cup: 8.6 ppg, 3.0 rpg 
β€’ 2025 U18 Women's EuroBasket: 11.9 ppg, 2.0 rpg 
β€’ 2025 U20 Women's EuroBasket: 4.9 ppg

Last year, she was part of two Italian teams that finished sixth (U18) and third (U20) on the international stage. Baldassarre led the U18 squad in scoring in La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands, posting 19 points vs. Greece, 13 vs. Finland, 11 vs. Czechia, 17 vs. Serbia and 12 vs. Poland. She converted 13 of her 41 3-pointers (31.7%) throughout the event.

Baldassarre hails from Brindisi, Italy, a coastal city in the southeastern part of the country along the Adriatic Sea. She's the Hokies' fifth European player in the last decade, joining Ε pela Brecelj (Slovenia), Matilda Ekh (Sweden), Alex Obouh Fegue (France) and Regan Magarity (Sweden).

With her addition, Duffy & Co. have 12 scholarship players for the 2026-27 season, six of whom are newcomers. Baldassarre is one of three incoming freshmen, joining guard Kaleo Anderson (Washington) and forward Arianna Harris-Mott (Maryland).

Here's Tech's future scholarship breakdown: