 "Photo: Kelly Calligan, Assistant Photo Editor")
A trailer without a bathroom, attached to the back of an old fraternity house. That's where it all started.
The San Diego State women's basketball offices used to be on the corner of Hardy Avenue and 55th Street. The prefabricated walls separating the men's basketball offices from the women's were so thin that if anybody sneezed, the people on the other side could have said, "Bless you."
In 1989, it's where head coach Beth Burns walked into on her first day of head coaching. She took one look at the place, the surrounding SDSU campus and reflected on everything.
"My first thought was, 'I think this could be a gold mine,'" Burns said. "I really did. I thought that this was the most beautiful place I had ever seen in my then-30 years of life."
"My first impression was that if I felt this way, then I couldn't imagine student athletes wouldn't feel this way. I couldn't imagine that we couldn't eventually recruit the brightest and the best to come here."
For eight years, all from the trailer, SDSU did recruit some quality players. The Aztecs also won some games, too.
SDSU went 151-83, a school-best 64.5 winning percentage including four NCAA Tournament appearances and three regular season Western Athletic Conference titles.
Peterson Gym, a facility Burns said is like a high school gym, used to sell out with immense student support and hardcore fans.
Tell senior forward Michelle Strawberry of the pecking order for San Diego's popular sports used to be - former assistant coach and current University of Denver head coach Pam Tanner said it went Chargers, Padres, then Aztec women's basketball - and her eyes open wide, giving a surprised look. Then, she'll laugh.
"What?" Strawberry said, giggling. "Peterson packed?"
***
In 1997, Burns went to Ohio State to take charge of the Buckeyes, staying in Columbus for five years and going 82-65. However, Burns was never really into it, her heart still with the Red and Black. She was let go on March 2, 2002 and joined Stanford's last season as their strength and conditioning coach. The Cardinal advanced to the Elite Eight.
Meanwhile, under Barb Smith and Jim Tomey, SDSU went just 74-144, never making it past the first round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament or having a winning season.
The Aztec community started to get louder, crying for a return. "Bring Burns back" was the moniker. She listened, and her heart eventually brought her back.
Burns signed a contract on Aug. 29, having committed to SDSU five months earler. Once it was official, she met with her team.
"I told our team the first day I met them, before I even hired my staff, that the challenge that I'm going to ask them to help expedite what we want to do is to live life forward," Burns said. "Don't compare, don't contrast.
"Don't say 'Oh, coach, we used to,' because to me that just slows us down."
On the court, Burns' style is fast-paced, and her passion for defense is something she's never lost.
"Defense allows you to do things you can control," Burns said. "Jump shots come and jump shots go. To the outside world, they think defense is just hustle and intensity. It's really not.
"Defense is a science."
She's made sure her players wear the formula on their backs - literally. Burns had the team's official T-shirts read "Defense Wins" on the back. Last year's shirts didn't have anything of the sort.
When asked who initiated the "defense wins" T-shirts, she got up from her seat, retrieved one of the many pictures on her desk from the corner of the office. This particular photograph showed four players - Michelle Suman, Lakeysha Wright, Christina Murguia and Falisha Wright - around Burns with a cake in front of them. The cake reads "100 wins." At the bottom of the pastry, the word 'together.'
"That's what I ask my team, every time we break," Burns said. "How do we do it? We do it together."
***
On Oct. 20, the team's fifth day of practice, Burns stopped the players in the middle of a weaving drill.
Some had not been finishing, passing sloppy in a drill that also works on conditioning. She had everyone give themselves a grade. Lots of C's, a couple of B's.
"How many just threw up a shot?" Burns asked. "If it didn't matter, we wouldn't be doing it. Approach it like it matters."
Later, she expanded why she interrupted practice.
"I don't think the sloppiness was as much lack of caring," Burns said. "It's that some of us aren't great passers, and it's really an effort to make a good pass.
"If I allowed people to pass poorly, if I said this is just a warm-up, then I wouldn't be doing my job.
Senior guard Veronica Shaw, who was recruited by Smith and played under Tomey, has seen more than a handful of coaches try to do the job.
"What is it; it's my fourth year and I'm on my third coach?" Shaw said. "It's real hard to take in. You get so used to a coaching staff and so comfortable with them, then to lose those and get new ones, it's kind of hard to make another relationship with new coaches."
The Aztecs' task will be making adjustments and handling a coach who seems not afraid of shaking things up.
"It's about changing our culture," Burns said. "A culture of a team that hasn't had success. A point in time comes when you lose and you lose and you lose, and any human being gets somewhat conditioned to that effect. It's very easy to have something go wrong early in the contest and have something in your mind go, 'here we go again.'
"That's the challenge."
***
Burns' last game coaching the Aztecs was on March 16, 1997. SDSU lost, 80-68, to Oregon in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The main reason? The Ducks were huge, much taller and massive than SDSU, a squad whose points-allowed average was first in the country.
The identity of the recent Aztec teams, including this season's? Small. Really small.
"Other teams will be bigger than us every night," Burns said. "Does it scare me? No, not at all. It is what it is."
As she is speaking in her office in the third floor of the Athletic Department, working from a place she helped lay the foundation for, one gets the feeling that Burns sees no reason why her team can't be back in the national spotlight.
For now, one can find her coaching a team which finished 8-20 last year from a practically empty Cox Arena, with high school-like attendance.
Where Burns starts over - again.
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