The 2009-10 season was one that began with considerable optimism for the SMU women’s basketball team. The Mustangs were coming off back-to-back postseason berths and had a veteran team led by four seniors —guards Jillian Samuels and Brittany Gilliam, forward Delisha Wills and post Alice Severin — poised for another run toward the NCAA tournament.

That run got derailed before the season even started. Days before the Mustangs took on Texas in a preseason scrimmage, Wills chased a ball toward the sideline in practice. She planted her left foot inside the sideline to save the ball, and while her foot and knee stayed in place, her momentum kept going, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and meniscus in her left knee. Before the first game tipped off, Wills’s season was over.

Senior forward Delisha Wills needs just 12 points to reach 1,000 for her career (photo by Travis Johnston).

“That was tough,” head coach Rhonda Rompola said. “We had relied so heavily on her before, and we were planning to rely heavily on her last year. She’s a huge part of what we do.”

Wills had prepared for last season needing just 12 points to become the 17th player in SMU history to reach 1,000 in her career.

Wills underwent surgery on her knee and watched from the sideline as her team went 20-11 without her and made it back to the WNIT. She, Samuels, Gilliam and Severin all had been part-time or full-time starters since their freshman year, and to watch them finish up their careers was difficult for Wills.

“It was tough,” she said. “(Samuels and I) had been playing together for a long time — we grew up playing together. JB (Samuels), BG (Gilliam) and Al — we grew up at SMU together. We were supposed to go out together.”

Instead, Wills became the team’s unofficial fifth coach (joining Rompola and assistants Lisa Dark, Deneen Parker and Danny Hughes), encouraging teammates and offering pointers to the Ponies’ younger post players.

“‘D’ was constantly helping people from the bench — she’s an excellent teacher,” Rompola said. “I hope she gets the opportunity to coach, because she’d be great at it.”

“My main thing was never to criticize — I just tried to motivate on the bench,” she said. “But there were days that were harder to watch than others. My butt got pretty sore riding that pine.”

Considering the fact that the Ponies lost Wills for the full year, point guard Raquel Christian for the spring semester and junior post Christine Elliott also got hurt toward the end of the season, the fact that SMU won 20 games last year could be interpreted only as one of the best — if not the best — coaching jobs of Rompola’s storied career. Now that she is back on the floor with her teammates, Wills said the Mustangs should be aiming toward the postseason again — specifically toward the NCAA tournament.

“We could have been NCAA-bound,” Wills said when asked how good the 2009-10 team could have been had everyone played a full season. “Going into that season, we had talent and we had experience. It’s time for us to get back. The WNIT wasn’t enough for us anymore. We have to get back to the NCAA tournament.”

One of the Mustangs’ other leaders this year, senior forward Haley Day, said the return of Wills to the lineup is about far more than points and rebounds.

“We really missed her emotional leadership last year,” Day said of Wills. “She’s always getting everybody fired up.”

Day acknowledged that others tried to fill that role last year, but said Wills somehow has a gift when it comes to inspiring her teammates.

“‘D’ is different,” Day said. “When she says something, we get pumped up. We listen to her.”

To call the 2010-11 season a new start for Wills would be an understatement, because it’s almost like she is joining an entirely new team. Day and Elliott are her only teammates with whom Wills has significant playing experience (Christian sat out the 2008-09 season per NCAA transfer rules, while current juniors Heidi Brandenburg and Sam Mahnesmith played limited minutes). That, coupled with Wills’s continued effort to regain her strength in her leg, means that the Mustangs’ most experienced player could, at times, appear to be a freshman just getting used to playing college basketball.

Head coach Rhonda Rompola is thrilled to welcome senior forward Delisha Wills back to the SMU lineup (photo by Travis Johnston).

“She’s still not 100 percent,” Rompola said. “She’s still in the process of getting into basketball shape. The knee is fine, but she might not be able to stay on the floor for as long as she did before, but that will come as she plays more.”

“My real goal is, come conference (the Ponies’ first Conference USA game is Jan. 6 at Tulane), I want to be back there,” Wills said. “(In non-conference games), I want to get the experience, to try to get back to what I was doing when I was kicking butt, when I was driving to the hole. I want that explosiveness back.”

If she does return to the level of strength and on-court performance she enjoyed before her injury, she could team with Elliott and Day to give the Mustangs one of the best frontcourts in Conference USA. With dual low-post threats, Rompola said Elliott, in particular, could thrive when sharing the court with Wills again.

“Haley (Day) is one of the purest shooters out there,” Rompola said. “Last year, she sometimes waited too long to get going, but we need her to get off to fast starts.

“But Chris and Delisha are going to really help each other. Last year, with ‘D’ out, teams collapsed on Chris. With ‘D’ back in there, we can flip-flop those two. Chris has worked really hard on her outside shot, and she’s a better high-post passer, so if defenses want to focus on her, she can come out to the high post. Defenses can either step back, which will let her get her shot, or she can find ‘D’ with a pass out of the high post. Those two should really make each other better.”

Wills agrees that she and Elliott could form an intimidating pair of post threats for other teams. Because they often go against each other in practice, Wills said she knows first-hand how good Elliott — and therefore the two as a pair — can be.

“That’s what we’ve been working at this preseason,” Wills said. “I’m not playing the five (center), but I’m one of strongest players on the team, so I know I can challenge her, and you can see her getting better.”

Wills said she enjoys pushing Elliott in practice, because she realizes the challenges the two could present to opponents this season.

“Come game time,” she said, “it’s us against them.”

Wills said she is optimistic her knee will hold up to the rigors of the game, albeit with the soreness that goes along with grinding through the long season.

“I have full confidence in it,” Wills said. “My thing is, if anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, so I might as well go all out. When you worry about it, that’s when stuff happens. Besides, at this level, if something’s not hurting, you’re not working hard enough.

“I’m working hard, and I’m ready to go."