Anna Christine Wilson (born July 12, 1997) is an American former college basketball player for the Stanford Cardinal of the Pac-12 Conference. As a guard, she holds the team record for most games played over a career with 160, the fourth-most in the history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). At the 2014 FIBA Under-17 World Championship for Women, she won a gold medal as a part of Team USA. She played three seasons of high school basketball for Collegiate School, where she set the team record for career assists with 246 and had the fifth-most points in team history with 735. Moving to play as a senior for the Bellevue High School Wolverines, her team finished the year with an undefeated season and won the 2016 Class 3A girls state championship. She was named to the McDonald's All-American Game, an all-star girls' basketball game composed of many top-ranked American and Canadian high school basketball graduating seniors.
At Stanford, Wilson played primarily a bench role until her fifth-year senior season. As a fifth-year senior, she started every game, was named the Pac-12 Co-Defensive Player of the Year and made the Pac-12 All-Defensive Team, and won the 2021 NCAA Division I national championship with the Cardinal. She finished her career with Stanford in 2022 after six seasons, and again made the Pac-12 All-Defensive Team. After college, Wilson declared for the 2022 WNBA draft, where she went unselected. Her brother Russell is a quarterback for the Denver Broncos in the National Football League who won Super Bowl XLVIII with the Seattle Seahawks.
Early life and high school career
Anna Christine Wilson was born on July 12, 1997 in Richmond, Virginia, to Tammy and Harrison Wilson III, her mother a nurse and her father a lawyer. Her father played American football and baseball at Dartmouth College. Her grandmother was a college professor and her uncle graduated from Harvard Law School. By age five, she began playing basketball, and, as she got older, her father coached her at a local YMCA before he died when she was 12.
Wilson participated in the United States Under-16 national team trials in 2013. She won a gold medal at the 2014 FIBA Under-17 World Championship for Women as the United States defeated Spain in the final, 77–75; Wilson played 3:05 minutes and missed her only field goal attempted. She attended Collegiate School in Richmond, Virginia before she moved to Bellevue, Washington for her senior year. At Collegiate, she modelled how she played after Steve Nash. After three seasons, she held Collegiate's career assists record with 246 and had the fifth-most points in team history with 735. For the Bellevue High School Wolverines, Wilson was voted a captain of the team by her teammates. She played as a point guard, and averaged 15.3 points per game, 3.2 steals per game, and 4.6 assists per game as Bellevue finished with an undefeated record and won a Class 3A girls state championship.
ESPN HoopGurlz ranked Wilson as a five-star prospect and the 42nd-best player in the United States while recruiting website Prospects Nation ranked Wilson as the 34th-best player and as a four-star prospect. She graduated high school in 2016. She was selected for the McDonald's All-American Game, an all-star girls' basketball game which comprised many of the top-ranked American and Canadian high school basketball graduating seniors and was played the same day as a counterpart boys' game. Before the match, she suffered a concussion in practice, which was her third; consequently, she did not play in the game. As a high school sophomore, she verbally committed to attend and play for Stanford University, and had offers from Wake Forest, Maryland, Marquette, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
College career
Wilson only played in six games during her freshman year with the Stanford Cardinal due to health issues: she missed the first eleven games as she recovered from her concussion, and missed the final eleven games of the season with a right foot injury. She made her Stanford debut against the Yale Bulldogs, where she scored eleven points over seventeen minutes played in a 102–44 Stanford victory. She finished her freshman year with seventeen points over forty-eight minutes played. She made her first career start against the UNLV Lady Rebels during her sophomore year and scored eight points. She scored a career-high twenty-one points against the Ohio State Buckeyes in a game Stanford lost 94–82. She finished the year with an average of 3.3 points per game over 10.7 minutes per game and two games started, though she missed the last seven games of the season because of a left foot injury.