2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup: Yvonne Anderson ready to lead Serbia in US quarter-final challenge

If you listened closely during the quarterfinals draw for the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup you might have heard the whole of Serbia gasp.

The European champions, looking to stake their claim on the world title, drew the United States for the knockout round.

No one team is unbeatable but given the Olympic champions' current form Team USA were the opponent all remaining nations were hoping to avoid.

The Americans are the only team undefeated at the tournament, and in the process have broken the team record for most successive wins at a World Cup. They notched their 27th straight win in the final group game against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Securing passage to the semi-finals won’t be easy for Serbia, but they have their own secret weapon who has already proven to pose problem's for their rivals in Sydney: Yvonne Anderson.

The 32-year-old naturalised Serbian has been a stalwart in the backcourt ever since she first played for the side last year.

So far at the World Cup, she has averaged 15.2 points and four rebounds a game as well as leading all-players in assists (32). But perhaps the true mark of quality is the fact that she already is averaging most minutes played by anyone in the tournament.

She is a leader, and a crucial piece of puzzle for Serbia if they are to try and knock the US off their perch.

But Anderson's rise to the top of the ranks has been more than a long time coming; her hoops career to date has been long and winding. 

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Yvonne Anderson: The making of a perfect playmaker

Anderson knows better than most basketball players that good things take time.

After a bright four years at the University of Texas, the 1.70m-tall guard and daughter of coach Mike Anderson seemed destined for America’s premier basketball league: the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).

But then, in 2012, she went un-drafted.

Set back, but undeterred, Anderson continued to work on her game and a year later, she was picked up by Sweden’s Visby Ladies.

What then followed was a decade-long overseas hoops odyssey.

From Sweden to Luxembourg, to Italy, Greece and Turkey, Anderson spent the following 10 years honing her craft across the other side of the Atlantic regularly encountering WNBA players competing in Europe in their off-season along the way.

In 2015, Serbia’s head coach Marina Maljkovic saw Anderson while she as playing for Pallacanestro Torino. Impressed with what she saw, Maljokvic invited the American to join her side at Galatasaray, a club she was also coaching in the Turkish league.

Three years later, when Anderson reappeared in the Turkish Super League for Besiktas, Maljkovic called upon her again but this time to ask if she would consider representing Serbia internationally.

Without hesitation the Arkansas native accepted the offer. With the depth of talent in the United States it is not uncommon for Americans to forge an international career elsewhere.

And while there was some delay to the process, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Anderson became available for Serbia just in time for EuroBasket 2021.

It was perfect timing.

The European powerhouse would go on to win the event, defeating familiar rivals France in the final with their newest recruit leading all-scorers.

Then, three quick months later from claiming their continental crown Serbia, and Anderson, were Japan-bound for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

And though the Serbs failed to muster up another medal, with France exacting their EuroBasket revenge in the bronze medal-match, Anderson had ticked off another accomplishment she had once though might never be possible.

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As Anderson was carving out memories for herself with her new Serbian team-mates, she was also unknowingly catching the attention of the WNBA who were studying the newly-minted international closely.

Amongst her impressive performances on the world stage Anderson had put on a particularly strong showing against Team USA in the semi-finals of the Olympics. She led Serbia with 15 points, two rebounds and one assist.

Then her graft finally seemed to have paid off.

At the start of this year a dream that the Serbian-American had for a long time finally came to fruition when she made the roster of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun; becoming, in effect, a 32-year-old rookie.

Though Anderson was later waived in June by the eventual 2022 WNBA finalists, her late career bloom has become a case study in why there is no one perfect way to forge a professional basketball career.

Sending the United States packing from the World Cup in Sydney will certainly not be easy.

But with the length of the journey Anderson has been on to get to this stage she understands all too well that nothing comes easily; rather it comes with grit, hard-work, and above all, patience.

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