ARLINGTON, Texas — Alissa Pili knows were it not for her two seasons playing for the University of Utah under head coach Lynne Roberts, the 2022-23 campaign when she earned Pac-12 Player of the Year and first-team all-conference honors, and the 2023-24 season, when she again earned first-team All-Pac 12 honors, that she likely would not now be in her second season in the WNBA.
Now that Roberts is coaching the Los Angeles Sparks, a team that Pili and the Minnesota Lynx faced earlier this season, she couldn’t be happier to see such a familiar face on the W sidelines.
“I’m super happy. She’s the perfect person for the job and think she deserves everything,” Pili, 24, said. “Getting a job at this level, it’s tough. She’s a great coach and I loved playing for her. I knew the Sparks would be in good hands, so super excited for her. It’s cool to see a familiar face in the league.”
Roberts has said that coaching in the WNBA was never a goal she actively pursued during her time leading the Utes, but that’s exactly how things have played out for her.
“Seeing her in that kind of environment and element, she looks like she belongs there,” Pili said. “I knew when I went to Utah, it was all going to be in good time that she would be leveling up. It’s good to see her there.”
Pili, the eighth overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, has played nine games so far this season for the Lynx and is averaging 1.4 rebounds per contest. Last year as a rookie, she played 22 games for Minnesota and averaged 2.4 points and 1.2 rebounds per game. And even though like most rookies she spent a large part of her first year on the bench watching, her former coach likes the trajectory her career is on.
“I’m really proud of her,” Roberts said. “When you’re coming in as a rookie, it’s so hard in this league. But if you’re on a team that has a chance to win the whole thing, it’s even harder to get minutes, right? She paid her dues. This offseason she committed herself in a different way with work ethic and stuff. She’s an incredible person and what she has meant for the Native community, for the Polynesian community, it’s really powerful.”
Much like it was for Pili during her two seasons at Utah, Pili felt incredibly welcomed by the fans and the community from day one in Minnesota. “I’d never been to a place that just welcomed me the way that they did. Just the whole environment and the way they supported women’s basketball, it was amazing,” Pili said. “I felt like that was why I thrived when I went to Utah, was the environment.
“I think all that support and stuff goes to show that it really takes people lifting you up and helping you get through for you to be successful,” she continued. I’m fortunate enough that I got that experience. I haven’t been back there since college, but I definitely want to go back. I miss it so much.”
This offseason, the ex-Ute played in Athletes Unlimited (AU), the women’s pro league that many of her WNBA colleagues play in during the winter, a league where four team captains pick their teams each week during a five-week season with players and amassing points for wins and personal achievements and a large portion of player salaries being donated to a nonprofit organization of their choice.
“It (AU) was fun. It was really a unique experience, the way we get to play with so many different people in a short amount of time. It was really good for me to be out there and play, just get some games under my belt,” Pili said. “I think more than anything what was special about it was the way the staff and the players were very intentional about everybody’s differences were positives.
“We had a nonprofit organization we got to donate to during that experience. I thought that part was really cool too.”
Her coach with the Lynx, Cheryl Reeve, is already seeing the benefits for Pili of watching so much basketball from the bench last season as a rookie manifest themselves in year two.
“Well, nobody likes to sit. There’s no question she learned a lot last year by watching,” Reeve said. “She was a great teammate. Think she learned a lot about the game, what she needed to work on. But we’re proud of her. We’re proud of the work that she’s putting in and the confidence that she’s exuding now for this year’s team.”
Something else that Pili fondly remembers from her two seasons as a Ute is getting to play in the NCAA Tournament twice. And Pili showed up in a big way, scoring 20 points or more in four of her five career NCAA Tournament games, including two games of 30 or more points, an impressive list including her final game at Utah, when she scored 35 in a second-round loss to Gonzaga in the 2024 Tournament.
“It was amazing. It was something I really wanted to experience while I was in college and I was really lucky,” she said. “It was my first time at the NCAA Tournament, my first year at Utah and then we went back again the second year. It’s just a different type of time.
“In the NCAA Tournament, everything is amplified and there’s so many eyes on it, especially the last two years, there were so many people watching. It just made it really fun. I feel like I was the type of player who really thrived in pressure situations when a lot was on the line.
“I liked it. I enjoyed it and the team that I was with was such a joy to be around and to make it that far with them, it was super special.”
Right now, Alissa Pili is the only Utah product playing in the WNBA. But with her former Utes head coach, Lynne Roberts, now coaching in the league with the Los Angeles Sparks, she thinks that means more Utes could be joining her in the W in the future.
“Yeah, I take a lot of pride in that because I love and appreciate where I came from. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Utah, I don’t think I’d be in the same situation,” Pili said. “Yeah, I definitely want more girls to come out of there and be in the league. It’s nice to see a familiar face with Coach Lynn being a coach in the league, but it would be a lot nicer if I saw some players too. So, hopefully that is something that happens in the future.”
Stephen Hunt is a freelance writer based in Frisco, Texas.