A lot has changed, but not everything.

Six years after playing her final game at Colonial Life Arena, A’ja Wilson was back on the floor getting shots up Friday afternoon.

Her resume has grown just a little bit since those final days in Columbia. No. 1 overall draft pick. Two-time WNBA MVP and champion, five-time All-Star and a bestselling author.

The person, though? The one laughing and joking with her Las Vegas Aces teammates through an afternoon practice back inside the building which features a statue of her outside. Same as she ever was.

“She is the way she is for a reason,” Aces head coach Becky Hammon said about Wilson. “And those are her roots. She’s just a tremendous superstar, graceful. What you see is what you get every day; this is not a put on. She’s the same person every day, and she also happens to be the greatest basketball player on the planet. To come back here, I was really excited.”

Wilson and the Aces are back in Columbia for a pre-season exhibition game against the Puerto Rican National Team at 2 p.m. Saturday in Columbia. In the grand scheme of this season it is one final tune-up before Tuesday’s season-opener in the Aces’ quest for a third consecutive championship.

For Wilson it is the homecoming of all homecoming, quite literally getting a hero’s welcome from everyone associated with the program in a unique opportunity to return to the court she dominated for four seasons.

“It’s truly a blessing to be back here,” Wilson said. “My teammates, they were screaming on the bus looking at the statue. That right there touched my heart.”

If ever a player deserved this type of homecoming — an afternoon where she will be the center of attention from fans in her hometown clamoring to see her in person again — it is the one who changed everything in Columbia.

The accelerant who transformed a good program into a great one, the focal point of both Dawn Staley’s first Final Four team in 2015 and her first National Championship squad two years later. The first in a long line of Palmetto state superstars who chose to stay home and help build a dynasty, paving the way for the likes of Ashlyn Watkins and MiLaysia Fulwiley nearly a decade later.

“I think what’s really super special about A’ja for me is she found herself very early in life,” Staley said. “Who she is, what she stands for, what she believes in. And now she’s blossomed. The basketball is easy. I like the growth that took place off the court.”

Even for the player more used to being the center of attention than anyone in the world, it was fair to wonder if this was too much.

“I don’t want to put her in situations,” Hammon said about scheduling the game. “She deals with enough, she has enough on her plate, and it can be super stressful for athletes to go back to where they’re just getting pulled in a thousand different directions. But she always handles herself gracefully. Once she said yes, we were trying to move those wheels.”

They moved quickly, and rolled all the way across the country. Over 3,000 miles later Wilson is back where it all started, getting to spend one more afternoon on the court in Columbia. The teammates are different, the name on her jersey represents a professional organization instead of her home state and her youngest teammates were high schoolers back when she played here.

But certain feelings never go away, and this one will last a lifetime.

“Columbia obviously raised me,” Wilson said. “There’s going to be a lot of people here that watched me grow up. I’m just happy to be back, healthy and here with my professional team.”

It will only be her homecourt for a couple hours, but it will be home forever.

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