SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Utah star forward Alissa Pili powered the No. 2-seeded Utes to a first-round win Friday in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, scoring a career-high 33 points with eight rebounds and eight assists (also a career high) in a dominant 103-77 victory over No. 15-seed Gardner-Webb.
“I think just posting up hard whenever I had the opportunity,” the 6-2 Pili said regarding the key to her success Friday evening at the Huntsman Center, the Utes’ home court. “It’s mostly just my teammates finding me, and like just hitting me when I’m in those one-on-one situations. Yeah, I just kind of let the game come to me and took advantage of those situations.”
Taking advantage of the opportunity has been the hallmark of a resurgent season for the 21-year Pili, who is enjoying a full-circle moment full of promise after finding herself at a crossroads in her basketball career just one year ago. Pili was a forward at Southern California at this time last year, and she’d just finished her third season with the Trojans with a career-low scoring average of 7.8 points per game. It was a far cry from the 16.3 points average she recorded her first season in 2018-19, where she earned Pac-12 Freshman of the Year honors.
“The situations and environments I was in in the past just kind of — just made me lose love for the game, and just the joy for it of actually getting up and trying to get better and get back to my game,” Pili said in January. “I just felt like I wasn’t happy with how I was playing and just the environment I was in.”
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That lead Pili to do some soul searching, where she reevaluated her future desire to play in the WNBA and her current situation at USC. The program had moved on from head coach Mark Trakh after the 2020-21 season, which also marked the fourth straight season the Trojans missed out on the NCAA tournament. Trakh was replaced by Lindsay Gottlieb last season, after which Pili said she felt like the program “just wasn’t the right fit” anymore.
She entered the transfer portal in March 2022, hoping to stay in the Pac-12. Just five weeks later, the Anchorage, Alaska, native chose the Utes’ program and head coach Lynne Roberts, who had just led the Utes to their first second-round appearance in the NCAA tournament since 2009.
Pili made her presence known at Utah immediately, scoring 27 points at home in the season opener against Idaho. She said that she “found my groove again” that night, noting she “felt like the old me.” She backed up her performance time and again this season, helping Utah to a 25-3 regular-season record that included an 84-78 win over then-No. 3 Stanford in their regular-season finale and a share of the program’s first Pac-12 season title.
“She really knows my strengths, and I think she uses me and puts me in the best position to use (my strengths),” Pili said of Roberts in December. “I think just the playing style that we have over here just goes perfectly with my game, and I’ve been able to thrive off of that.”
“I’ve been so impressed with her willingness to come in and adapt to how we do things and what we expect — and not only adapt but thrive,” said Roberts. “I think she is in an environment where she’s pushed and challenged and held to a higher standard, but also loved and encouraged and supported — not that she didn’t get that (at USC) — but I know that’s what we provide. And, I think, she’s thriving.”
The fourth-year junior was named Pac-12 Player of the Year on Feb. 28 (with Roberts earning 2023 Coach of the Year honors), marking the first time since Utah joined the league in 2011-12 that a Ute has won either award. Pili led the conference in scoring with 20.6 points per game and a league-best 59.9-percent shooting from the floor. Her 45.8-percent shooting from 3-point range ranked second in the conference, and her 16 20-point games this season was a Pac-12 high.
Earlier this week, Pili was named to the Associated Press All-American Second Team and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association All-American Second Team. But rising to the occasion has been Pili’s “MO” since she was a kid, when her father, Billy Pili, insisted she play football against boys – and dominate them as well.
“My dad would make me embarrass the boys every practice,” Pili shared recently. “He would line them up and we would go one-on-one, and I was (expected) to win those battles. Yeah, it was fun. Football was my first love, I think.”
She played football from third grade through eighth, switching between the offensive and defensive lines. Pili said that experience helped her develop the toughness and competitiveness that she now displays on the basketball court.
“I was surrounded by football my whole life,” said Pili, who is the second oldest of eight siblings and whose oldest brother, Brandon, just finished his final season as a defensive lineman at USC. “My brother played, my cousins played, so I just told my dad I wanted to play, too. I was the only girl at the time, and it was a blast.”
Growing up, the Pilis lived in Alaska’s northernmost town of Barrow, which is where Pili first remembers playing basketball. She started playing organized basketball when she was 8, shortly after the family moved to Anchorage, and her high school exploits are the stuff of legend.
Pili played at Anchorage’s Dimond High, where she was a three-time Alaska Gatorade Player of the Year and a two-time National Female Athlete of the Year by MaxPreps, joining U.S. swimming great Missy Franklin as the only two-time recipients of the award. Her aggregate 2,614 points are a state basketball record, yet that wasn’t Pili’s only notable high-school athletic achievement: She also played volleyball and competed in wrestling and track, finishing with 13 state titles to her name across all sports.
But Pili had to find her way back to that star version of herself after three years at USC, and Roberts noted that motivation was evident immediately upon Pili’s arrival at Utah.
“She came here because she felt like she wasn’t reaching her potential in a sense, and she put responsibility on herself for that,” Roberts explained Friday. “…When she got here, we had very candid conversations about, ‘Here’s what you need to do and you need to adjust and adapt to us, we’re not going to adapt to you. You need to get in the best shape of your life.’ And as I’ve said many times it’s easy to say, ‘Yep, I will.’ It’s really, really hard to do.
“And the discipline that she’s had, when no one is watching, when no one is looking, when everyone else is asleep, all her teammates are asleep, to get up and get herself in the shape she’s in. And then the buy-in that we’ve had from her has been really fun. You can hear how her teammates talk about her. There’s no ego with Alissa, which allows everybody to support her and promote her.”
“She’s a phenomenal player,” added sophomore forward Jenna Johnson, who had 20 points with four rebounds and five assists against Gardner-Webb. “She makes all of our lives a lot easier. She gets banged up in the post, takes a little bit of that for me, so that’s nice. … She’s so unselfish, so you just like to play with people like that. She’s an incredible teammate, so I’m really thankful to have her.”
If Pili continues at her current scoring pace, she could become just the second player in NCAA women’s basketball since 1999-2000 to average more than 20 points, make at least 20 three-pointers and shoot better than 60-percent from the field. Pili has scored 20 or more points in 17 games to date.
At 26-4 overall, the Utes are two wins shy of tying the program’s single-season record, set in during the 2000-01 team, which went 28-4 and advanced to the Sweet 16. Matching the record seems possible under Roberts, now in her eighth season at Utah and recently named one of 10 finalists for the Naismith Coach of the Year award.
As for just how satisfying the year has been to date, Pili says “very.” “I think just seeing that the hard work has been rewarded with just everything that’s come with this season, it’s just been great to be a part of,” she said.
“I believe everything happens for a reason, and like this was just meant to be my home. So I’m just glad I made the move, and yeah, I’m just happy to be at Utah.”
The Utes advanced to play the North Carolina State-Princeton winner in the Greenville 2 Region.
