He won’t allow himself the luxury of looking back. Not yet. The dust hasn’t settled, the ending is too raw, unpleasant and uncomfortable and the highs — numerous as they were — are too removed from the recent to be easily embraced.
Eventually, Tory San Antonio will see his name in the Cal State Fullerton basketball record book, the line crediting him with being the Big West Defensive Player of the Year, and smile. He’ll remember a Friday evening in March 2022 when he found himself guarding Duke’s Paolo Banchero on national TV, with CBS’ Jim Nantz at the mic. The same Paolo Banchero who would be the NBA Draft’s No. 1 overall pick three months later.
“I think I did all right,” San Antonio said about the Titans’ first-round loss to a Duke team that played for the national championship two weeks later.
See? San Antonio does remember the little things.
There were more. Lots more. He’ll remember other things along the way that led to those moments. Absorbing the quiet, lead-by-example work ethic of Jackson Rowe, the play-everywhere versatility of Davon Clare, the efficient and intelligent Austen Awosika, who showed San Antonio the intricacies of playing point guard in college. All these lessons awaited San Antonio when he arrived on the CSUF campus from Moreno Valley in 2019, fresh off an All-CIF career as a three-star recruit at Rancho Verde High School.
He’ll remember absorbing those lessons, applying them and conveying them to his younger teammates along the way. And he’ll remember a journey that—now that it’s over—stands out in its own Rowe-like, quiet, understated way.
When you rewind the tape, which he’ll do eventually, San Antonio’s career was full of moments. He endured COVID-abbreviated freshman and sophomore seasons, played in an NCAA Tournament as a junior, went to two Big West Tournament finals, became the first Titan since Frank Robinson in 2007-08 to be named Big West Defensive Player of the Year and suffered…
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