September 30, 2024 Nolan Hughes

Andrew Anderson and Las Vegas wanted to win the Elias Cup. They wanted to beat Portland just as much.

In the closing frame of a pivotal Game 3 of the 2024 Elias Cup Finals, Kyle Troup flushed three consecutive strikes. The anchor of the three-time champion Portland Lumberjacks forced his opponent, the hungry, top-seeded Las Vegas High Rollers, to throw two of their own.

After the third strike, Troup turned away from the fervent hometown crowd and gazed directly at Las Vegas’ anchor Andrew Anderson.

“You want it? You got it!” Troup said with a wink.

For four long years, Anderson yearned for this very moment. Ever since Portland throttled Las Vegas in Game 5 of the 2020 Elias Cup Finals, Anderson made clear his desire for revenge.

He said it when Las Vegas had their first opportunity at a rematch: “We want that rematch and we want it here in BoPo.” (July 2022)

He said last year before Las Vegas faced the then-three-time-defending champs: “I’m tired of Portland winning every year. We’ve got to get ourselves to the semis and do something about that.” (Sept. 2023)

He said it time and time again this season: “I don't know when or if we'll get to bowl Portland, but I can promise you: Me, AJ (Johnson), and Matt (Russo) have some unfinished business there.” (June 2024)

Anderson didn’t want this moment. He demanded it.

Johnson and Anderson fist bump during the 2020 Elias Cup Finals

Anderson and AJ Johnson joined the High Rollers in the franchise’s debut 2020 season. Neither was manager Amleto Monacelli’s top selection — that was first overall pick François Lavoie — but they quickly established themselves as franchise pillars.

While the Elias Cup had eluded the duo, they have steered Las Vegas to the semifinals or better each of their first three seasons.

“Me and Andrew have talked so many times about how we can win this thing,” Johnson said. “We’ve never finished outside the top four. We've bowled really well together. I feel like we do as much as we can to try to get our teams to gel together.”

“We’ve come so close, and I pride myself on being a winner at the end of the day. This event has sickened me for a few years,” Anderson said.

Anderson said on the Beef and Barnzy show that they have been a visibly nervous team on past PBA League shows. What the team needed, he felt, was experience, particularly at Bayside Bowl where the postseason would transpire.

As last December’s draft unfolded, the veteran presences Las Vegas lacked kept falling into their lap. Anderson and Johnson would’ve sprinted to the podium for each of the team’s selections if they could, but they had to reassure their manager first.

Anderson emphasized to Monacelli that the players they desired match up well at Bayside; Monacelli was quick to point out that they had to make the playoffs first.

“I'll get us there,” Anderson responded, admitting he was being a little selfish at that point.

While Monacelli prefers to defer to his team leaders, particularly his right-hand man Anderson, he is no push over.

“I want to be together with the players because this is a team. It's not about me. It's about them,” Monacelli said. “(Andrew) listens to me when I have something to say, because I don’t say something until I know that is the right thing to do. When I am unsure, I listen to him.”

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate a guy like that putting that much faith in me,” Anderson said. “Amleto is one of the most honest people you can ever be around. When you have a conversation with him, you can’t help but believe everything he says. He believes in us so much that you almost have to believe in yourself.

"He had me staring at a dot for 15 seconds because he said it would make my heart rate go down," Anderson continued. "If you told me to do that, (I’d laugh). But when Amleto tells you, you go stare at a dot.”

Monacelli ultimately trusted his team leaders’ intuition during the draft. Almost immediately, he saw their vision.

On paper, the High Rollers were loaded: 2023’s fifth-best player in Matt Ogle; a lefty capable, but not reliant on using urethane in Matt Russo; a future HOFer in Sean Rash; and the perpetually underrated major champion in Thomas Larsen.

“We got the right guys,” manager Amleto Monacelli said. “We got guys that can play straight, like Rash and Larsen. We got Matt Russo as a lefty. Then we have AJ, Ogle and Andrew that can hook the ball.”

“Andrew and I couldn't believe it,” Johnson said. “We literally said after the draft, ‘This is the year we win. This is how it's supposed to happen.”

 

The High Rollers convene during a regular season match against Portland

Some outsiders, however, did not share Anderson and Johnson’s enthusiasm.

Skeptics pointed to Rash and Russo’s checkered history, and the boisterous personalities of Rash and Johnson. Competitors nicknamed Las Vegas “Team Ticking Time Bomb.”

None of the preconceived red flags manifested inside the huddle in any tangible way. If anything, Rash and Ogle’s incumbent chemistry supercharged an already tight-knit group.

“I felt comfortable from Day 1,” said first-year High Roller Ogle. “I felt like they had my back and I had their back. It never felt awkward. It’s like me and Rash in doubles, it just worked.”

Russo, who befriended Anderson during their one collegiate season together at Webber International University, returned for his third season with Las Vegas. He said the draftees trusted Anderson’s leadership from the outset.

“He’s led this team from the beginning,” Russo said. “We had to buy in and trust that. He knows everybody's role. We know he knows what he's doing. Sometimes you butt heads, but at the end of the day, it's all from a good heart.”

While Las Vegas racked up wins early and often this season, they had plenty of kinks to iron out. 

Monacelli and Anderson shuffled the lineup like a deck of cards, especially before Larsen’s finger injury sidelined him for a month. During Rounds 3-6, Las Vegas utilized four different players in the anchor position.

Looking back, Johnson raved about Anderson’s keen sense to orchestrate the lineup.

“I don't feel like Andrew gets enough credit for how intuitive he is when it comes to seeing what we're doing as a team and putting guys where they need to be in order to set us up for success,” Johnson said. “There were many times this year where Amleto and Andrew would talk, and Amleto would leave it up to Andrew to set a lineup. We wouldn't know the lineup until each guy was ready to throw a shot. Depending on what that first guy did, that dictated who was up after them. Andrew was really good at doing that. He just knows what's going on at all times.”

“It's about reading people, reading the room, understanding what people need,” Anderson said. “It's really hard as a 29-year-old to look at one of the best of all time, someone who I’ve looked up to for so long, and say, ‘I need you to be a team player.’ There was a lot of buy in, and I'm super appreciative of that.”

Troup stares down Anderson

With the High Rollers’ versatile and experienced roster, any of the six players could have been the victim of Troup’s glare… but not really.

It’s a running joke in PBA circles that Anderson, the unanimous selection for regular season MVP, puts himself in the anchor position more often than he should.

He’s heard all the quips from competitors, ball reps, even teammates, and he acknowledges there is some validity to them.

“I've been called a bad team player,” Anderson said. “At times in my life, I've been a bad team player. In college, I wasn't a great team player. I learned lessons the hard way. I'm not on Team USA this year. There were people picked over me.”

He recalled not being selected in the 2018 PBA League draft, and how being spurned sparked his 2018 PBA Player of the Year season.

“I had some really upsetting moments over the last calendar year from a personal space that led me to saying I'm going to be the best team player possible,” Anderson said. “Not only am I going to be a good team player, but if they need me, I want to follow through.”

Anderson came through in Game 2, heaving three strikes in his 10th frame and evening the match at one win apiece after Troup failed to do the same.

Now in Game 3, the High Rollers needed him again.

Anderson prepares to throw biggest shot of the season

The Michigan native thought of his brothers, Matt and Mike, as he locked in for his 10th frame.

His brothers were two of the 50-plus family and friends in attendance when he threw his iconic, match-winning strike against Portland back in Allen Park — the strike that made the High Rollers believe that this year might truly be different.

“They’re going to love this one,” Anderson thought to himself before calmly acing the first of two requisite strikes.

As Anderson toed the line for his second shot, his mind transitioned to his teammates. He replayed all the conversations he shared with Johnson about performing on this very stage.

“This is the moment that we've been waiting for all year,” Johnson told Anderson during the match. “This is ours, and we're going to take it. We're not going to let them give it to us.”

“When I turn around and I see my teammates’ faces and how relieved and happy they are that we got the job done, that's really what I do it for,” Anderson said. “The feeling of throwing those shots is indescribable. I want to do them all the time.”

The crowd — who not only cheered “MVP! MVP!” for him 24 hours earlier, but one game earlier — now filled Bayside Bowl’s lower bay with an onslaught of “LUMBERJACKS!” chants.

Anderson took a brief moment to revel in the absurdity, laughed, then told them to stuff a lobster in their mouth.

“There are times where maybe I put myself in anchor more often than I should. Maybe I asked for it too much — but guess what that built?” Anderson said with a prideful grin. “Now I'm prepared for anything. You can chant ‘Lumberjacks’ all day, and I smile through it.”

Las Vegas went on to clinch their first Elias Cup with an emphatic 277-225 Game 4 victory, in eerily similar fashion to Portland’s blowout Game 5 victory in 2020. 

In the moments following the long-awaited triumph, Anderson kept circling back to two words: appreciation and culmination.

“The word I would use to describe how I'm feeling is appreciative. I got the opportunity to throw some awesome shots tonight, but wow did we buy in,” he said. “Tonight was the culmination of everything: We're here. We've been here, and now the experience has paid off.”

The High Rollers, at long last, hoist the Elias Cup