SAN DIEGO — It must have been the best, worst-kept secret in Alcala Park that day, if you could even call it a secret. It wasn't so much that Kendall Bird, Sydney Hunter, Myah Pace, and Jordyn Edwards were keeping anything from anybody, or that Cindy Fisher was out of the loop. It was just that the 17th-year head coach wanted to hear it from the four seniors themselves, wanted to hear that it was official.

Good news like this was too sweet to get through the grapevine.

"It was kind of funny, actually," Bird recalled. "We had known, and all of our teammates had pretty much known that we were gonna come back. In our post-season meeting with Coach Fisher, she was like, 'So what are your plans for next year? Are you gonna come back?'"

Several months later, there's an ease in Bird's voice as she describes the moment and relays how the group answered their coach's query with a question of their own. A tone that indicates that there was never really a decision to be made in the first place.

"When do workouts start?"
LOOK BACK AT EACH of their careers thus far — Bird, Hunter, Pace, and Edwards — and the accomplishments stack up quickly, like schoolwork during midterms. There's the 13 West Coast Conference accolades between the four of them, academic and all. There's the two trips to the WCC title game in the last four seasons and a combined 58 wins across the last four seasons.

But look closer, and there's something else there: unfinished business. A season that ended on the floor of the Orleans Arena, watching conference champion Portland celebrate. Another that ended in quarantine, as a COVID-19 pause put an untimely end to last year's campaign and stopped hopes of redemption in their tracks. Injuries have marred almost all four of their college careers at one point or another. Full potentials, at least collectively, have yet to be realized.

"Having a lot of unfinished business was a big factor in why all the seniors returned," said Hunter, a graduate student who is entering her fifth year with the Toreros. "We knew how it felt to not have the opportunity to play, and so to get an opportunity to finish what we didn't get to start last year is a big reason why we all came back."

Unfinished business or not, Hunter asserts that the announcement — which the team made public in a late July press release — was news to Fisher, albeit news of the best type possible.

"She was so shocked and surprised," the 6-0 guard adds, laughing. "It was just a great feeling, because she was excited that we were coming back…it was a nice feeling to feel that we were welcomed again…that she was on the same page with us…she wanted us to leave feeling like we accomplished something."

Leaving San Diego women's basketball with one thing to do: turn their focus to one last season with an accomplished group of seniors.
THE PREPARATION for an upcoming season is always the same, Fisher says in an early November interview, but there's no denying that returning a combined sixteen years of Division I women's basketball experience in your starting five can help.

"We can get through things a little bit faster," she describes, with plenty of past years to compare it to after taking over the Toreros in 2005. "And they pick up on it a little bit quicker…It's just nice to have those veterans because those young players can watch them and they can just pick up on things a lot quicker."

Those aforementioned young players and returners will ensure that the upperclassmen won't have to do the heavy lifting by themselves. They include freshmen Courtney Wristen, and Harsimran Kaur, who hails from Kapurthala, Punjab, India.

"They're all extremely talented," Fisher says of her underclassmen. "Courtney and (Harsimran) both bring size and a lot of depth into our post position."

Sophomore guard Kylie Horstmeyer is back after graduating high school a year early to join the Toreros, and 6-1 forward Kasey Neubert has joined the Toreros from Hawaii (who USD will begin their season against on Tuesday).

"Kylie has played the inside for us last year but now has become more of a three player, a wing player for us, and has really done a great job," said Fisher. "(Neubert) is extremely experienced, very strong, she's a really good athlete. I think all of them will contribute right away."

Pair this with two All-WCC Preseason Team honorees (Edwards and Pace), a player who averaged 9.6 points per game with a team-best 6.3 rebounds last season (Hunter), and a seasoned leader who led the team in blocks last season (Bird), and you get what the Toreros not only hope will be a winning combination, but a group that wins their way.

"We hang our hat on our defense," says Bird, a mainstay for a San Diego defense that was among the best in the country last season. "It's what we focus on, it's what we talk about every day in the locker room. We're super proud of the way we play defense, we take a lot of pride in that, so we really like to capitalize on every aspect of defense, getting better."

As for the offense?

"I would definitely say transition offense (is the emphasis)," said Hunter, who led the team in free-throw percentage (72.4), field goal percentage (49.3) and total rebounds (120) in 2020-21 while recording a team-leading two double-doubles on the year and tallying seven double-digit performances. "It definitely comes from defense, when we get steals and stuff, that transitions into transition offense. I think we're a really fast team, we run the floor really well, there's some times where we realize we haven't set up an actual offense because we realize we've just been transitioning on offense. So that's a big offensive identity for us."
SCHEDULE-WISE, IT'S AS TOUGH as it's ever been for the Toreros in 2021-2022, with the team taking on Hawaii, Washington, Idaho, and Air Force in non-conference play along with hosting The Dana on Mission Beach Holiday Tournament, in which Drexel and Nebraska are slated to visit.

"We really tried to upgrade the non-conference schedule a lot," Fisher said. "It's gonna be a really good test of where we are at that time."

Crosstown rival San Diego State is on the schedule, as is UC Irvine, CSUN, and Arizona State before West Coast Conference play begins on December 30 at BYU.

"I think we put together a really good non-conference (schedule)," she adds. "I think everybody on it is very challenging. I think it's gonna be a challenge every single night."

Picked to finish third in the WCC alongside their two preseason team selections, the Toreros hope to put together another successful season in the conference, one that returns them, perhaps, to the championship game that they've reached twice in the last four seasons.

"BYU and Gonzaga, and us, we're always fighting for those top spots," said the head coach. "I think all the way down, it's a great league, everyone returns a lot of players from last year, I think there's going to be a lot of veterans out there that have a chip on their shoulder to win it for their team…You can go from top to bottom, it's going to be a battle every night."
SEVERAL MINUTES AFTER she relayed the story of her and her teammates' return, how they told their coach, "Of course we're coming back," that certainty is back in Bird's voice. As the interview winds down, she talks about how nice it will be to have fans back in the Jenny Craig Pavilion, how much fun it will be to get things back to normal across college basketball. But then she offers one more line, one final sentiment that makes clear precisely why she, Hunter, Edwards, and Pace returned for one final season despite all they've been through, a sentiment that underscores exactly what's at stake for the Toreros this season.

"Definitely just proving that we are that championship team," Bird says. "Me, Sydney, Myah, and Jordan, we didn't come back to get second place."