Healthy Anderson enabled South Fayette to reach new heights
Emily Anderson of South Fayette is the Observer-Reporter’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Anderson led the Lions to a WPIAL Class AAA championship.
Emily Anderson of South Fayette is the Observer-Reporter’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Anderson led the Lions to a WPIAL Class AAA championship.
Emily Anderson of South Fayette is the Observer-Reporter’s Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Anderson led the Lions to a WPIAL Class AAA championship.
How do you stop Emily Anderson from making an impact? Well, even after the South Fayette senior’s high school career, the only answer to the question is injury or illness.
Sure, the variety of defenses opponents used might have limited the 6-4 senior center’s scoring, but but her role on defense was immune to game planning.
She helped the Lions’ zone defense frustrate opponents. South Fayette held opponents to only 41.2 points per game and Anderson was an integral part of the program’s first WPIAL title.
Anderson averaged more than 16 points in seven postseason games, including a triple-double in the WPIAL Class AAA semifinals. She averaged 13.7 points per game during the season to help South Fayette reach the PIAA quarterfinals, where it lost to Villa Maria. Anderson also created plenty of second chances with her 10 rebounds per game.
It added up to the University of Pennsylvania recruit being named the Observer-Reporter Girls Basketball Player of the Year.
“I’m really proud of my teammates and myself,” Anderson said. “We wanted to win last year, but we didn’t. It was great to win the WPIAL and our section this year. Our administrative director is complaining about having to buy two banners. We were happy we were able to make history at South Fayette.”
At one time, Anderson was the one who was frustrated. Twelve games into her freshman season and three nights after she had a double-double on the road against Trinity, Anderson, then 6-2, tore the Medial Patellofemoral Ligament in her left knee.
She missed the next 33 games, including all but one game of her sophomore season – a preliminary round playoff loss to Ringgold. Her knee got infected following surgery, requiring an additional operation.
One week before she was to be cleared by doctors to resume playing, Anderson experienced intense stomach pains. She had gull stones, the result of an intravenous antibiotic. She had her gall bladder removed.
“It was really rough,” Anderson recalled. “I remember sitting on the sideline during every game and having a heart attack every time they got a rebound because I couldn’t be out there. It’s always hard watching instead of playing, but it taught me a lesson. When I got back out there, I made sure to do my best.”
Healthy, two inches taller and with a full offseason of lower-body strength training, Anderson had a junior season that Lions head coach Matt Bacco envisioned when he saw her in preseason workouts as a freshman.
Anderson averaged 11.8 points and 9.8 rebounds as a junior, showing mobility as a 6-4 post player who could contest shots inside and quickly move to the corner to block a three-point shot. She helped South Fayette reach the WPIAL title game, where it lost to Blackhawk, but her season would end there after doctors diagnosed her with loose knee cartilage.
Anderson needed rest and plenty of work strengthening her left knee. It didn’t slow her as a senior.
“She absolutely took the next step this season,” Bacco said. “She is still getting better. I think she played her best basketball throughout the WPIAL and the state playoffs. She’s a kid who when you run ball screens at her, she’s mobile enough to go underneath them and force the ball-handler to make a tough play.”
Bacco wasn’t the only one who took notice of his post player’s improvement. Anderson, who has a 4.1 grade-point average and plays clarinet in the school’s concert band, drew the attention of college basketball coaches from across the country. She received 18 scholarship offers, including West Virginia and Kentucky, but education and proximity to home drew her to the Ivy League.
She committed to Penn before her senior season and with nothing but a championship on her mind, Anderson had another impressive year to help the Lions capture the WPIAL Class AAA title with a win over arch-rival Trinity at the Petersen Events Center.
In the WPIAL semifinals against Hampton, Anderson had 27 points, 16 rebounds and 13 blocked shots. Three days later, she had nine of her 18 points in the fourth quarter to help the Lions claim the gold medal.
“Those were the kind of performances we wanted and needed out of her,” Bacco said. “Before every game, I joke with her before we got on the bus and say ’20 and 12.’ That’s what I thought she was capable of on a relatively routine night.”
Those are the kind of performances Anderson had the playoffs. Against Villa Maria’s physical defense, Anderson still had 13 points and 11 rebounds, and scored 22 points with 10 rebounds in a first-round win over Ambridge.
The surgeries and missed games were a distant memory as she helped South Fayette climb among the state’s elite programs. It was all a part of the Lions’ focus to right
“We were always reminded that we were close to making history last year and we were determined to actually make it this time,” Anderson said.