In September 2012, when coach Brenda Frese visited high school senior and Maryland women’s basketball commit Shatori Walker-Kimbrough in her hometown of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, she made a suggestion to Walker-Kimbrough’s aunt, Renate Forbes.

Whenever the Terps played near Pittsburgh over the next four years, she wanted Forbes to cook for the team.

“My sister loves to cook, so she was all for it,” said Walker-Kimbrough’s mother, Andrea Kimbrough. “She got very excited when Coach Frese mentioned it to her.”

At the time, it seemed Forbes would get the chance to feed the Terps at least twice during Walker-Kimbrough’s career. About a year prior, the Atlantic Coast Conference announced the addition of Pittsburgh, which would join the league beginning in Walker-Kimbrough’s freshman season.

But on Nov. 19, 2012, the day Walker-Kimbrough signed her National Letter of Intent to attend Maryland, conference realignment thwarted those dinner plans.

After her freshman year, Walker-Kimbrough and the Terps would leave the ACC for the Big Ten, meaning Maryland would no longer have a conference foe in Pittsburgh.

The 5-foot-11 guard doubted she’d get a chance to play in front of a hometown crowd, especially after the Terps played Pittsburgh in both of her first two seasons — once in College Park and once in the Virgin Islands.

“Yeah, we’re definitely not going to get this one at home,” Walker-Kimbrough remembered thinking at the time.

But as Frese has done with past players, she continued to work on getting Walker-Kimbrough a game close to home. And Wednesday night, one of the nation’s best players will be able to finally play in front of her friends and family.

Forbes will cook and bake for Walker-Kimbrough’s team for the first time Tuesday night, more than four years after Frese first mentioned the idea. Walker-Kimbrough, one of the Terps’ senior leaders, will then lead the No. 4 Terps (11-0) into the A.J. Palumbo Center to play Duquesne in Pittsburgh, about a half hour from where she grew up.

“We wanted to bring her back a lot sooner,” Frese said, “but it kind of worked out appropriately.”

‘A BIG DEAL’

In 1988, during Frese’s freshman year as a guard at Arizona, Wildcats coach June Olkowski scheduled a road trip to play Iowa State and Drake, schools in Frese’s home state of Iowa. The gesture stuck with her.

“It’s always lined up with who I am and how important our families are to our program,” Frese said. “To be able to take these guys home, it’s a big deal.”

Now, as a mother of twin 8-year-old boys, Frese said she’s gained an even greater appreciation for the home trips. She called scheduling a “homecoming” game for each of her players her “No. 1 priority.”

The trips often involve home-cooked meals and visits to player’s homes, providing the team an insight into the upbringing of one of their teammates.

“We were able to see where she grew up and how it all started,” former guard Chloe Pavlech said of former guard Laurin Mincy’s homecoming trip at Rutgers in 2015. “It shows you a different side of your teammates that you didn’t exactly know.”

Maryland’s most recent game this season, a Dec. 12 trip to Loyola, was near the hometown of its other senior, Brionna Jones. She’s a Havre de Grace native whose brother plays on Loyola’s men’s basketball team.

“[Right] when we sign them, we start working on it,” Frese said.

Next year, the team will travel to play Akron for junior Kristen Confroy, who hails from Solon, Ohio. Freshman Destiny Slocum, a Meridian, Idaho, native, has already sparked conversations between Maryland and Boise-area schools.

But the process of making Walker-Kimbrough’s homecoming a reality was particularly complex.

‘AWFULLY GIFTED’

After the Terps played Pittsburgh in back-to-back seasons, Frese said she “couldn’t get interest” from the Panthers to host her squad. So her focus shifted to Duquesne, which Maryland has never played in its history. Dukes coach Dan Burt, though, has had a relationship with Walker-Kimbrough since her high school playing days.

And if Burt had his way, Walker-Kimbrough never would’ve left Pittsburgh.

Burt, who started as an assistant with the Dukes in 2007 and became head coach in 2013, was the main recruiter of Walker-Kimbrough and a large reason Duquesne was the first school to offer her.

“We knew of Shatori from her freshman year of high school,” Burt said. “She was awfully gifted … I knew she’d be a great college player.”

Duquesne’s courting of Walker-Kimbrough kept her confidence up at a time when she wasn’t getting much attention from other colleges.

“They basically gave me the confidence that I could play at the next level,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “That’s where it all started.”

For Burt and Walker-Kimbrough’s AAU coach, John Tate, the relative lack of basketball attention was puzzling.

“I couldn’t believe that the Tennesses, the Stanfords, schools of that ilk, they weren’t on her the way Maryland was,” Tate said. “We played some of the top players in that class. I thought she was as good or better than a lot of them.

“We ended up being correct.”

Eventually, some high-major schools started showing interest, but Walker-Kimbrough narrowed her list to Maryland and Duquesne before joining the Terps.

Despite losing out on Walker-Kimbrough, who’s become a WNBA prospect, Burt welcomed the idea of having her back to compete in her home state.

Even though he had agreed, the teams needed approval from Duquesne’s new athletic director, and the position wasn’t filled until last fall. Frese said they confirmed the details this spring, “which is pretty late for us.”

“We had to sweeten the pot to be able to make it happen,” Frese said. “[Walker-Kimbrough’s] was pretty extensive.”

Records obtained by The Diamondback showed Maryland agreed to pay Duquesne $20,000 for the game, which is more than what Maryland paid to host Towson this season. It is also more than it’s paying Loyola to visit the next two seasons, according to public records.

“I know it wasn’t easy to get that game, and I really appreciate it,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “I’m not only speaking for myself, but for my family back at home.”

“[Frese] worked hard to get this and she kept her promise.”

‘CLOSE CONNECTION’

Andrea Kimbrough expressed mixed feelings about the $20,000 payment and insisted it “would’ve been okay” if her daughter never got her homecoming game.

But Walker-Kimbrough said her mom’s reaction about nine months ago, when Walker-Kimbrough told her that the Duquesne game was officially scheduled, tells a different story.

“The second I told her, she was already starting to plan it. I was like, ‘Mom, we have nine months. We’re fine,'” Walker-Kimbrough said. “I really don’t know who was more excited, me or my mom.”

The exuberant reaction can be explained by the nature of their mother-daughter relationship, and it exemplifies why Frese goes out of her way to schedule homecoming games.

“Growing up, it was just me and her,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “We have a really close connection, I would say more than most daughters and moms. … When I think of home, I think of my mom.”

During the recruiting process, Walker-Kimbrough decided she wanted to leave the area to play college basketball. She wanted to create a second home, and her mom didn’t mind.

“As close as me and her were, we sort of needed some distance,” Andrea Kimbrough said. “I didn’t want her to go too far, but I wanted her to get out and spread her wings.”

Walker-Kimbrough doesn’t get much time at home anymore. Playing a winter sport cuts into the players’ holiday breaks, and Walker-Kimbrough played on Team USA in the Pan American Games two summers ago.

So Wednesday’s game is particularly useful for Walker-Kimbrough, who will stay at home afterward for an extra day during her Christmas break.

“Our Maryland [players] are usually the first ones home,” Frese said. “I was actually chuckling that she’ll be the first one home while everybody else is going back on the bus or flying out.”

‘SUCH A SUPERSTAR’

The Aliquippa community is used to having successful athletes come out of Hopewell High School. Running back Tony Dorsett, a member of the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, attended Hopewell in the 1970s, while volleyball player and two-time Olympic medalist Christa Harmotto went there in the mid-2000s.

Now Walker-Kimbrough, a 2013 graduate, has a chance to become the next former Viking to join the professional ranks.

She’s been to a pair of final fours with the Terps, won countless conference honors and was on All-American lists as a sophomore and junior. Last season, she led the nation by shooting 54.5 percent on 3-pointers.

This year, she’s on the Wooden and Naismith Award watch lists and is a finalist for the Wade Trophy, honors given to the country’s best women’s basketball players. Some 2017 WNBA mock drafts have her as a top-five pick.

“There are definitely a ton of people who want to support her, who want to come out and see her play because she is such a superstar,” Pavlech said.

Walker-Kimbrough’s family has arranged to take a private bus from Aliquippa into Pittsburgh for Wednesday night’s game. She’ll have family from both sides in attendance in addition to a group of friends and teammates from her youth. With the game so close to Christmas, Walker-Kimbrough said more of them will be in town than usual.

Some members of a local Special Olympics basketball team that Walker-Kimbrough has been volunteering with since she was in high school will also be in attendance.

Even though many residents in her hometown are Pittsburgh fans, Andrea Kimbrough said they are ready to welcome back her daughter and cheer her on, whether they knew her growing up or not.

“A couple of my friends have gone on my Facebook page saying, ‘Look, our Maryland stuff has come in!’ Kimbrough said. “To be at the game and see people wearing Maryland gear, that’s going to be really, really fantastic.”

‘AN INCREDIBLE DAY’

Pavlech said she was nervous to return home when the Terps played at Ohio State last season. Tate, who is from Pittsburgh but played basketball at UMass, said he struggled during his team’s annual trip to play Duquesne.

Both admitted there are various elements of a hometown game that can add pressure and distractions. Burt hopes one of those factors — or anything, for that matter — will throw Walker-Kimbrough off Wednesday.

“I hope she’s 0-for-10 and doesn’t do a damn thing. That’s what I’m hoping for,” Burt joked. “After that, I hope she’s an All-American. But [Wednesday], I hope she has the worst game of her life.”

Neither Pavlech nor Tate are anticipating Walker-Kimbrough to have any serious problems because of her strong mental makeup. That dedication and drive are reasons why she’s grown so much since she last played in Pittsburgh.

“She was a scrawny little senior that had no idea what was going to be in front of her,” Frese said. “The path has led to greatness.”

After struggling to attract attention from major conference schools, she’s risen from being the No. 43 player in her recruiting class, according to ESPN, to hold the No. 7 spot on Maryland’s all-time scoring list.

And Wednesday, after four years, the city she grew up in will get to see how far she’s come.

There’s people’s like Tate, who said her advice to younger players in his program has been invaluable, and Cindy Rebich, an aide at a special needs school who gushes over Walker-Kimbrough’s treatment of the players in the Special Olympics program.

Even Burt, who will be game planning to stop her, still holds ample respect for the player he lost a recruiting battle for.

“She’s the kind of person you want your daughter to become,” Burt said.

All of them and more will be there Wednesday night for a game that Walker-Kimbrough’s mother said she expects to be “surreal.”

“This is a way for her to be able to celebrate in her senior year with family and friends and everybody that has spent so much time in her life supporting her,” Frese said.

“It’s an opportunity for people to go see her in person and to be able to appreciate everything that she’s done for so many people. It’s going to be an incredible day for so many people.”