SAVANNAH, Ga. - Savannah State University's men's basketball team has dedicated its 2012-13 season to the memory of Andrew Anderson, a former teammate who died Aug. 11, 2012, from a rare strain of pneumonia. He was 21.
 
Anderson, a 5-foot-10, 170-pound guard from Buford, Ga., was a freshman on SSU's 2009-10 team. He played in 24 games, averaging 1.5 points and 0.7 rebounds per game.
 
When SSU plays its season opener at 8 p.m. Friday against Trinity Baptist at Tiger Arena, senior guard Cedric Smith will wear Anderson's No. 5 jersey, which he will wear throughout the season, to pay tribute to Anderson. Smith wore No. 23 during his first three seasons but recently switched with Christopher Spears, a junior forward.
 
“I was sitting at home and thinking about a way that I could make sure his name doesn't die out,” Smith said of Anderson. “I figured I could switch my number to 5 and play for him because I know how much that would have meant to him. I could wear his number and perform for both of us.”
 
Smith called Spears before preseason workouts began and explained why he wanted to switch jersey numbers. Spears approved. Smith sent his proposal via text message to SSU head coach Horace Broadnax, who replied, “We can make that happen.”
 
Smith recently took a photograph of himself wearing No. 5 and shared it with Anderson's family.
 
“I put a picture up on Instagram and showed it to his sister,” he said. “His sister told his mother and that's how they found out. They said they really appreciate me helping his memory to live on and everything. They said he's looking down on us and he's real happy.”
 
Off the court, SSU players are wearing bracelets that read “#5 is alive” to honor Anderson, who graduated in 2008 from Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Ga.
 
“You know those little wristbands you see, like Nike wristbands with 'Livestrong' on them and stuff like that?” said SSU guard Preston Blackman, a senior from Hopkins, S.C. “We got '#5 is alive' because that was his basketball number that he always played with, and we want to show the fact that he is still alive in our hearts and our spirit. He's not dead. He's still playing through us.”
 
Smith has even found a way to wear his bracelet during games.
 
“I put it around my ankle,” he said. “And my sock is around my ankle so it covers it up.”
 
Sudden, rare illness
Anderson, who majored in business management at SSU, transferred to Lawson State Community College in Birmingham, Ala., and played there during the 2010-11 season.
 
“After one year (at SSU), Andrew just wanted to move on,” Broadnax said. “It was a decision that he made. And I respect him for it. He came to me and said, 'Hey, Coach, I won't be coming back.' At the end of the day, all players can't play for me and I can't coach all players.”
 
At Lawson State, Anderson played in 24 games and averaged 5.8 points per game. He remained in contact with his former SSU teammates.
 
“We always kept in contact,” Blackman said. “We always knew where he was at and what he was up to.”
 
In late July 2012, Smith said he saw a message posted on Twitter by Anderson's sister, Alexis, informing people that her brother was in a hospital in Atlanta. Smith, who is from New York, was in Atlanta so he went to the hospital to visit Anderson.
 
“I was at the hospital for three days in a row,” Smith said. “I went up there and just hung out with his family. I just sat by the window because we couldn't go in the room with him. We had to look at him through the glass. We just sat by the window. He was still in a coma. It was medically induced. (The doctors) tried to take him out one time but his body kind of freaked out so they had to put him back into a coma. He was in a coma for a couple of weeks.”
 
Anderson battled his illness for more than three weeks in the intensive care unit before he died. The official diagnosis was cryptogenic organizing pneumonitis and bronchiolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia, a rare condition for someone who is young and athletic.
 
“It's crazy,” Smith said. “It's one of the craziest things I've ever experienced. He was in shape. He never got tired. When it was happening, we couldn't believe it.”
 
Anderson was preceded in death by his father, Sean Anderson, and his grandmother, Genilda Anderson. He is survived by his mother, Jennifer Anderson, and his siblings, Aaron and Alexis Anderson, and Caitlyn Vann.
 
“I was real shocked,” Blackman said of Anderson's death. “At first, I didn't even believe it. It was real surprising to me. I thought everything was going to be good. I didn't think it was just overwhelmingly going to take him over.”
 
Visitation was at Crowell Brothers Peachtree Chapel Funeral Home in Norcross on Aug. 14. The service was Aug. 15 and Anderson was buried in Peachtree Memorial Park in Norcross. Several SSU players attended Anderson's funeral.
 
Anderson, Smith, Blackman, Darnel Jones and Darius Baugh were SSU's five freshmen on the 2009-10 team. Jones and Baugh have since left the team. When they were teammates, the five players spent countless hours together attending basketball practices, traveling to games, staying in hotels, playing video games, going bowling and just lounging in each others' dormitory rooms at Bostic Hall.
 
“We were always with each other,” Smith said.
 
Generous, caring teammate
Smith and Blackman described Anderson, whose nickname was “Drew,” as a quiet person who would become more outgoing the more comfortable he felt.
 
“He was quiet at first but if you knew him, he was a real goofy person,” Smith said. “Everybody liked him. He didn't have any enemies. It was impossible for people not to like him. That was the kind of person he was.”
 
Anderson was only at SSU for one season but he and his teammates developed a bond that remains strong.
 
“When you go through a basketball season together, that's all you need, really, is a year because you go through so much in that year,” Blackman said. “Everything was a new experience. We all were new to Division I basketball and playing on scholarship. We all experienced that together. I learned a lot through Drew.
 
“There was a time when I was sick. I had a stomach flu, a stomach virus, and he came and brought me some stuff. And I didn't even ask him. He just heard that I was sick and he bought Pepto-Bismol, ginger ale, orange juice and a whole bunch of stuff. Nobody else really came to check up on me. He came. He made sure that I was straight. We developed a bond.”
 
Broadnax said he is proud of his players for taking the initiative to dedicate this season to Anderson.
 
“It's always tough when a young person dies,” Broadnax said. “Obviously, it's tough when anyone dies. But it had a deeper impact upon his teammates because, as a teammate, you're going through some of the same things, trying to get better, trying to win games, and as a freshman away from home, dealing with different issues. Cedric, Preston and Andrew all came in at the same time as freshmen and it's a whole different situation trying to adjust to being away from home, trying to adjust to the coach. It's an opportunity for them to band together because they're in the same boat. When a person dies young it's going to have an impact on those guys because they came in together and they're extremely young in any context.”
 
Telling the world about 'Drew'
Last season, SSU's first in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, the Tigers finished 21-12 overall and 14-2 in the conference. They won the MEAC regular-season title and accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament. It was an impressive turnaround for a program that finished 0-28 during the 2004-05 season before Broadnax arrived.
 
“I know he was proud of us,” Smith said of Anderson. “From where we came from, being without a conference and just playing to play, and to come around and finally win a (MEAC regular-season) championship, I know he was happy for us.”
 
Blackman said SSU's goal is to win the MEAC Tournament and earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Sports Illustrated this week predicted SSU will win the MEAC Tournament and be among the 68 teams in the Big Dance in March.
 
Last season, SSU ended the regular season with a 13-game winning streak. The Tigers secured the top seed in the MEAC Tournament and earned a first-round bye before losing, 59-46, to eighth-seeded Hampton University in the quarterfinals.
 
“For us to do the same thing that we did last year, that's settling, you know, just winning the MEAC and losing in the (MEAC) tournament and going back to the NIT,” Blackman said. “We should be able to do more with all the experienced players that we have. We have no freshmen, no sophomores. We've just got juniors and seniors. Everybody is grown. It's an older, experienced team. I feel like we should be able to handle the pressure.
 
“We should be able to play in the (MEAC) tournament and actually win it. And that way, a lot of people will take us seriously. And we'll be able to get looks (from scouts) as far as going on to the next level. Everybody's got personal goals but the team goal is to get to that Big Dance and see how far we can go with that. If we get to that dance, and we get on television, I'm pretty sure we'll talk about Drew. We want the world to know about Drew.”