The Kissinger family has had season tickets to Nebraska Cornhuskers football games for a quarter-century. They celebrate deliriously after every win and endure a gut-punch of disappointment with every loss.
Even though the Kissingers are a family of athletes -- all six members, including parents Brian and Amy, either played college sports or will do so by 2017 -- nobody had found a home with the Huskers.
Until now.
Taylor Kissinger, a 6-foot senior guard for Minden (Nebraska) and the No. 40 prospect in the espnW HoopGurlz Top 100 for the 2017 class, is set to officially become part of the Cornhuskers family when the NCAA's early signing period for women's basketball begins Nov. 9.
"When you're a little girl and you grow up in this [Huskers] environment with all the fan support, playing for Nebraska was all I wanted to do," said Kissinger, who lives less than two hours from the campus in Lincoln. "This has been a dream of mine."
The allure of a home-state school hits student-athletes differently, especially among top recruits who have a multitude of options. Among the top 50 women's basketball recruits in the 2016 recruiting class, for example, 14 stayed in-state to play college ball. Through Wednesday, 15 of the top 50 in the 2017 class had pledged to stay put.
Like Kissinger, Ana Llanusa, a 6-foot guard at Choctaw (Oklahoma) and the No. 32 prospect in the nation, decided home is where her heart is. Any visit to the Llanusa house -- or just a walk outside -- would provide ample hint of what school she has chosen. The fence around her yard not only has a red OU logo on it but also has a burnt-orange Texas Longhorns insignia. The difference is that the Longhorns logo is upside down -- to make it clear this is Sooners Country.
"My whole life, I already knew where I wanted to go," said Llanusa, who made first-team all-Oklahoma last year. "OU just feels like home."
Maybe that's because Llanusa's father, Tony, was a wrestler at OU before transferring to North Carolina.
Ana, who averaged 20.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 2.1 steals last season, has a chance to be the first OU graduate in a family that has revered the Sooners for generations. Even so, Tony didn't want his daughter to automatically sign with the Sooners.
"I wanted her to take some recruiting visits just to be sure this is what she wanted," he said.
That never happened.
Toward the end of her freshman year, Llanusa was invited to watch a Sooners practice. Afterward, coach Sherri Coale invited Llanusa to her office and offered her a scholarship.
"I smiled real big, but I was in shock," said Llanusa, who has a 3.78 GPA and is interested in studying business management. "Coach Coale told me to think about it. About 10 minutes into my 30-minute drive home, I called her and told her, 'Yes, I would love to play for OU.'"
Tony, who said his daughter went to her first OU women's basketball game when she was in second grade, said Ana was "glowing" after she got her Sooners offer.
It's a feeling with which Quannecia "Q" Morrison, a 5-foot-8 senior guard for McEachern (Powder Springs, Georgia), is familiar. Morrison, the No. 31 prospect in the 2017 class and a Georgia commit, said she strongly considered going elsewhere in the SEC after visiting Auburn.
"I just had to think about it. Georgia is home," said Morrison, who averaged 14.5 points, 8.1 rebounds and 3.5 steals last season as a junior. "I want to be that person who stayed home, broke some records, made some achievements and put Georgia higher on the map."
Joni Taylor, the first-year Georgia coach, would love nothing more. The Bulldogs have not won an SEC tournament title since 2001.
Morrison, who lives less than two hours from Georgia's campus in Athens, also wanted to give her mother, Tonya, easier access to her college games.
"Paying for my AAU tournaments and flights ... even when my mom wasn't able to make ends meet, she still made it happen for me," Morrison said. "She's very supportive. I can always hear her at games, busting on the refs or screaming and cheering. If I mess up, I hear her say, 'What are you doing?' And when there's a good play, even if it's from the other team, I'll hear her say, 'Good move, girl!'"
Kissinger has also had strong family support. Her parents both competed at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Amy played volleyball, and Brian played basketball. The kids all took after their father, in terms of their sport of choice. Derek played NAIA ball at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. Taylor's two sisters (twins) currently play college ball; Jamie is a 5-foot-9 junior guard at San Diego, and Brooke is a 5-foot-7 junior guard at Creighton. (Brooke will sit this season out after transferring from Illinois.) Next up as a college athlete is Taylor, who made first-team all-state in 2015 and 2016.
Like Morrison, Kissinger committed to a first-year coach. Amy Williams, who is in her first season at Nebraska, made a splash by getting a commitment from Kissinger, who missed half of last season with a broken forearm but still averaged 29 points per game.
"I would argue that Taylor is as good a shooter as anyone in the country," said Dickson Jensen, Kissinger's AAU coach with All Iowa Attack. "Her range is really deep. She's comfortable at the NBA 3-point line. And she's got a high basketball IQ."
Jensen said the recruiting interest for Kissinger spiked after she played an AAU tournament in Virginia earlier this summer.
"After that tournament, nearly every coach was calling her," Jensen said. "Louisville was intriguing to her. But Nebraska had made a coaching change, and she wanted to see how that played out."
Kissinger said she's glad she waited because she quickly built a bond with Williams. While that was happening, she got an earful from the small town of Minden, population 2,960.
"There were a lot of people telling me, 'You've got to go to Nebraska,'" she said. "I think the people in town wanted me to go to school where they can come to my games and support me, and that's how it turned out."