It’s fitting that Alyssa Brown, a Sahuaro High School alum who is one of the most talented players in Southern Arizona history, is able to play her final season of college eligibility in her hometown at McKale Center when UNLV visits Tuesday.
The game against Arizona at 6 p.m. allows her to play at home potentially one last time in front of a throng of family and friends.
After becoming one of the state’s top high school scorers and representing Southern Arizona well as a standout senior forward with the Rebels, Brown deserves this moment.
When asked in the latest All Sports Tucson Talk podcast what she is looking forward to the most about her return, Brown said, “To see my family … A lot of them haven’t been able to travel for various reasons, so being able to be back in front of them in my hometown, I am super excited about it. U of A has a good team, so I’m also excited for the basketball matchup as well.”
Her grandmother Rita Sartin has not been able to travel to Las Vegas to watch her play because of health reasons.
When UNLV played Arizona at McKale Center in the first round of the 2022 NCAA tournament, when Brown was a freshman, Brown became emotional when she saw her family and her grandmother at the team hotel before the team departed to play the Wildcats.
Sartin, who watched most of Brown’s games when Brown played at Sahuaro, finally has another opportunity to cheer for her granddaughter.
“It’s a business trip, so I don’t know how much time, but everyone’s gonna be welcoming me at the hotel,” Brown noted about arriving Monday and leaving Wednesday to prepare for Friday’s game at home against Stonehill.
She will also spend time with family after the game.
“Just being able to see them real quick is gonna be kind of what I’m looking for,” Brown said.
Brown is averaging 7.5 points and 9 rebounds a game and leads UNLV (2-0) with five blocked shots. She and frontcourt mate Meadow Roland (10 points and 13 rebounds a game) should provide Arizona’s Breya Cunningham, Isis Beh and Co. a solid test.
Brown has more than 500 points (542) and 500 rebounds (554) in her career despite playing sparingly as a freshman and not becoming a full-time starter until last season.
She was named the MVP of last year’s Mountain West tournament.
Her background in Tucson includes being a four-year starter for legendary coach Steve Botkin at Sahuaro, where she tallied 2,680 career points from 2017-21. That is second in the state’s history behind 2,913 scored by Julie Brase at Catalina Foothills from 1994-98. Brase is Lute Olson’s granddaughter.
Her senior season of 2020-21 was limited to only 19 games because of COVID-19 restrictions, otherwise she had the opportunity to break Brase’s record.
In terms of Olson, UNLV coach Lindy La Rocque and her family are close to the Olson family.
Her father Al played for Olson at Long Beach City College. Olson’s relationship with the elder La Rocque continued throughout and after his storied coaching career at Iowa and Arizona.
“Coach Olson is my Godfather … Coach and his family has and have been a part of my life since I can remember. I have many memories,” La Rocque said when UNLV played at Arizona in 2022. “Some of my earliest basketball memories are here in McKale Center, being with coach (Olson) and the teams and watching them, and every year my dad would bring us for a week, and we would watch practice and hang out and eat all the Mexican food that we can and kind of do the whole Tucson thing.”
La Rocque’s ties to Arizona continue to be strong because of her lifelong relationship with the current Arizona men’s basketball associate head coach Jack Murphy, who coached alongside her father Al at Durango High School in Las Vegas. Murphy also coached Lindy early in her youth basketball playing days.
“Murph was actually my babysitter. That’s how he started out, and then it, I guess, maybe developed into a camp coach. But he leaves the babysitting part out,” she said. “Murph’s been an older brother to me since I was little. He came here. He was a manager for coach (Olson), and obviously that didn’t happen by chance. My dad played a huge role in that.”
The first time I was fortunate to have the opportunity to watch Brown play was almost six years ago when she was a sophomore at Sahuaro in the Boyd Baker Tipoff Classic championship against Salpointe at Dick McConnell Gym.
Brown was the best player on the court, earning tournament MVP honors, despite her youth, tallying 16 points, 12 rebounds and five steals in the 46-39 victory.
The immediate thought was just by looking at Brown, a 6-foot force at the time, that she was in store for a special career in high school and beyond.
She was a forward who was able to bring up the ball and defend multiple positions. Her defense and rebounding around the basket was unmatched.
The basketball genes in her family kicked in at a high level.
Brown’s grandfather, Gene Moore, played basketball for Arizona in the early 1970s. Her mother, Lisa Moore, played basketball for Tucson High and her father, Alawnzo Brown, played basketball and football at Canyon del Oro.
Her older sisters Olivia Harden and Sydney Harden were also standouts at Sahuaro under Botkin. They served as assistant coaches during Brown’s senior year of 2020-21.
When asked what it means to her when she is considered one of the best, if not the best, players to come out of Tucson, Brown joked about taking that honor from her sister Sydney.
“I would feel honored and a little competitive that I took it from Sydney,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think I’d be here without being coached by and competing with my sister. You know, I would rub it in her face a little bit.”
Another former local standout, Salpointe grad Karlie Burris, is in her third year as a UNLV assistant.
Burris was a four-year starter under coach Pete Fajardo with the Lancers from 2001-05.
Burris and the Lancers were 113-21 during her career. Her teammates included Sybil Dosty, Christina Hurtado and Kellie Olson (another granddaughter of Olson).
During her sophomore and junior years, the Lancers were 61-5 and did not lose to a team from Southern Arizona. Salpointe lost to unbeaten Gilbert Highland in the state championship game in the 2002-03 season.
“It’s funny, whenever I talk with her, we talk about how fierce she was. She was just really competitive,” Fajardo, now an assistant at Pima Community College, said in a 2022 interview. “I always thought she had unlimited potential. She was the type of kid who would go out there and guard the toughest player on the other team and do all the dirty work.
“She would do whatever it took to be successful in helping her teammates win.”
Burris coaches Brown and UNLV’s frontcourt players.
“She really keeps me grounded, personally,” Brown said of Burris. “I know I can always talk to her.”
Another Tucson connection with UNLV: Director of basketball operations Amie Callaway‘s father Reggie resides in Marana. Reggie was an all-city running back at Cholla High School as a senior in the 1981 season who walked on at Arizona when Larry Smith coached the Wildcats.
Brown achieved her bachelor’s degree in finance in only three years and is studying marketing as her minor to maintain her eligibility.
Aside from potentially playing professionally overseas or in the WNBA, Brown has her sights set on down the road potentially opening a gym in Tucson and working with young, aspiring basketball players.
“Once I got to college and I saw how many high school girls didn’t know anything about recruiting and didn’t know anything about the resources and how to talk to coaches … it started my freshman year me wanting to give back to the community,” Brown said. “And then as I’ve been at UNLV, we’ve had a large audience of younger girls. We host our own camp and stuff. Just being able to impact them in little ways, just a little, ‘Hi,’ or, ‘Hey,’ it really like makes their day. I’ve kind of taken that as something I enjoy.
“I want to go out of my way to talk to fans after the game. I still have coaches and people who reach out to me from Tucson all the time, and they’re like, ‘Hey, can you talk to this girl for me?’ … ‘Hey, she wants an opinion on this,’ and I’m always open to that. I think that I didn’t realize my impact before. I thought I was just a headline at times, but I didn’t realize how much that these younger girls need someone that was in their shoes.”
How will Brown be received by Arizona fans Tuesday at McKale Center?
She’ll certainly hear the cheers from her family, friends and former teammates at Sahuaro.
Given her character, background and wanting to give back to the community in future years, she should hear an applause from Wildcat fans as well.
“I’m curious to see if I’m going to get booed or cheered when they announce the starting lineups and say I’m from Tucson. I am interested to see what that’s going to be like. You can’t hate a hometown girl,” Brown said with a laugh.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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