Appearing in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament is a baseline standard for Missouri State, but its two previous women's soccer seasons were anomalous.
Nine combined wins were bookended by a pandemic and the retirement of 26-year coach Rob Brewer, leaving the program in a teetering position.
Kirk Nelson, a veteran MSU assistant who had signed a promising 2022 class, believed the program had the means to return to the upper crust of the MVC.
MSU administration believed Nelson − a former recruiting coordinator at Pac-12 Washington State − could get it there.
They were both right.