Middle Tennesee State University Athletics
COLUMN: “What can I say, we’ve kind of dominated them”
2/4/2024 6:46:00 PM | Women's Basketball
The eighth win in nine tries for the Lady Raiders was the most lopsided yet in the long running MTSU-WKU rivalry
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Rick Insell wasn't calling his shot when asked about the MTSU-WKU rivalry on the CUSA Tipoff Show in the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. before the start of the season. He was just acknowledging the facts.
But if you listened to the 19-year head coach of MTSU that October afternoon, and then you watched what the Lady Raiders did on Saturday? You'd be remiss for thinking he wasn't throwing the gauntlet down months before these teams ever took the court.
"Western is one of our biggest rivals," Insell said. "What can I say, we've kind of dominated them."
The Lady Raiders' 80-48 thrashing of the Lady Toppers on Saturday encapsulated nearly everything fans love about rivalry games. The crowd, over 4,800 strong, made their presence known every single moment of the afternoon. The players, judging by the trash talk you could hear courtside and intensity that was palpable every trip up the court, were as motivated as they could possibly be.
You could see the intensity in the foul count, from Savannah Wheeler's atypical technical foul in the fourth quarter, to each of the Lady Toppers' top three forwards ending up with at least four personal fouls. The fire from WKU guard Alexis Mead, who decided to say something toward Insell in the second quarter after a WKU out-of-bounds violation, and subsequently did not return to the court for the rest of the game, certainly showed the chippiness that only a rivalry game can produce.
"We expect it every year," MTSU guard Jalynn Gregory said. "For them to make comments out there, maybe shove you a little bit. It's a rivalry game. We just try our best to stay level headed."
Insell acknowledged that even his own emotions were high during the game when discussing Wheeler's technical foul.
"That's what competitors do," Insell said. "They'll do their talking with their shot, but sometimes you just take so much of that you've got to say something back. I hate she got a technical foul, but she got chewed out enough to know she doesn't need to be doing that.
"But to be honest with you, I'd have probably gotten one too."
All that was missing from making this another great chapter in a long-running rivalry was a WKU team that could back up what they were saying on the court.
MTSU was the aggressor early, getting downhill drives to set up layups and free throws early, taking advantage of a WKU defense that lacked size and was forced to collapse the paint to slow down guards like Wheeler, helping spark a 16-0 run in the middle of the first quarter that gave MTSU a 14-point lead at the quarter break.
"I think we were just getting downhill attacks," Wheeler said, explaining that MTSU was able to beat each guard off the dribble, regardless of whether the Lady Toppers went over or under MTSU's screens. "We shot like 18 free throws at the half. Once we kept going, they all collapsed and we had open shooters be able to knock them down."
The three-point shooting was streaky, but came alive late, with the Lady Raiders drilling 5-of-7 attempts in the fourth quarter, four of those makes coming on a 17-0 run to end the game. Those two runs, one in the first, one in the fourth, made up more than MTSU's entire margin of victory on Saturday. In a paltry consolation to WKU, they outscored MTSU by one point in the 29ish other minutes of the game.
The Lady Raider defense, however, was the true engine for the MTSU's success on Saturday, holding the Lady Toppers to just 17.6 percent shooting in the first quarter and a 4-for-24 afternoon beyond the arc for the entire game, never allowing WKU any space on the perimeter. MTSU forced 13 turnovers, scoring 13 points off the WKU mistakes, all while holding WKU's top two scorers, Acacia Hayes and Destiny Salary, to a combined 9-for-29 from the field.
Gregory, who drew the assignment on Hayes, held the guard to just four points on 2-for-11 shooting with four turnovers.
"We just really heavily rely on each other," Gregory said of the MTSU defense. "When we play defense, it isn't just us against that person, it's all five of us together. We have help side, we've got cover downs and everything else."
But as dominant as Saturday was in the box score and to everyone in attendance at the Glass House, the full picture of MTSU's dominance of the rivalry only comes into focus when you take a step back.
Saturday's win was the eighth win in nine tries for MTSU over WKU, a stretch dating back to before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. It was the largest win ever for the Lady Raiders over WKU and tied for the largest ever in the series with a WKU win over MTSU in 1987. The 48 points the Lady Toppers did manage to score were the fewest allowed by MTSU in the rivalry since 1980.
The previous best scoring margin in the series for MTSU came on March 1, 2009, another game featuring a Lady Raiders' team coached by Rick Insell. MTSU triumphed behind 45 points from Alysha Clark, winning 87-61 in front of 5,307 fans in the Murphy Center. The win was Rick Insell's seventh over WKU. He now has 27 after Saturday's win, against just 12 losses to the Lady Toppers.
It's numbers like those that are why Insell called WKU merely "one of" MTSU's biggest rivals back in October. In recent history, for the vast majority of his tenure at the helm of the MTSU program, there's been little competition from WKU.
"I think (WKU) were on their heels wondering if they could play with us," Insell said. "They just got beat by Sam Houston. So, in their minds, they were probably wondering if they could play with us."
It's clear that WKU, like nearly every team MTSU has faced in Conference USA this season, could not play with the Lady Raiders. Thursday night's home game against Liberty could perhaps prove different. The size the Flames have in the post will be the first in CUSA that might be able to match up toe-to-toe with Anastasiia Boldyreva and Iullia Grabovskaia in the post.
The writer in me hopes that perhaps the Flames can put up a fight. There's only so many words I can write to describe blowouts like the one I witnessed on Saturday. But the MTSU fan in me?
Well, what can I say?
I certainly hope every other team on MTSU's schedule matches up like WKU did on Saturday.
But if you listened to the 19-year head coach of MTSU that October afternoon, and then you watched what the Lady Raiders did on Saturday? You'd be remiss for thinking he wasn't throwing the gauntlet down months before these teams ever took the court.
"Western is one of our biggest rivals," Insell said. "What can I say, we've kind of dominated them."
🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️ https://t.co/M1j4rRPx4g pic.twitter.com/Gszqtx77FL
— Middle Tennessee Women's Basketball (@MT_WBB) February 3, 2024
The Lady Raiders' 80-48 thrashing of the Lady Toppers on Saturday encapsulated nearly everything fans love about rivalry games. The crowd, over 4,800 strong, made their presence known every single moment of the afternoon. The players, judging by the trash talk you could hear courtside and intensity that was palpable every trip up the court, were as motivated as they could possibly be.
You could see the intensity in the foul count, from Savannah Wheeler's atypical technical foul in the fourth quarter, to each of the Lady Toppers' top three forwards ending up with at least four personal fouls. The fire from WKU guard Alexis Mead, who decided to say something toward Insell in the second quarter after a WKU out-of-bounds violation, and subsequently did not return to the court for the rest of the game, certainly showed the chippiness that only a rivalry game can produce.
"We expect it every year," MTSU guard Jalynn Gregory said. "For them to make comments out there, maybe shove you a little bit. It's a rivalry game. We just try our best to stay level headed."
Insell acknowledged that even his own emotions were high during the game when discussing Wheeler's technical foul.
"That's what competitors do," Insell said. "They'll do their talking with their shot, but sometimes you just take so much of that you've got to say something back. I hate she got a technical foul, but she got chewed out enough to know she doesn't need to be doing that.
"But to be honest with you, I'd have probably gotten one too."
All that was missing from making this another great chapter in a long-running rivalry was a WKU team that could back up what they were saying on the court.
MTSU was the aggressor early, getting downhill drives to set up layups and free throws early, taking advantage of a WKU defense that lacked size and was forced to collapse the paint to slow down guards like Wheeler, helping spark a 16-0 run in the middle of the first quarter that gave MTSU a 14-point lead at the quarter break.
"I think we were just getting downhill attacks," Wheeler said, explaining that MTSU was able to beat each guard off the dribble, regardless of whether the Lady Toppers went over or under MTSU's screens. "We shot like 18 free throws at the half. Once we kept going, they all collapsed and we had open shooters be able to knock them down."
The three-point shooting was streaky, but came alive late, with the Lady Raiders drilling 5-of-7 attempts in the fourth quarter, four of those makes coming on a 17-0 run to end the game. Those two runs, one in the first, one in the fourth, made up more than MTSU's entire margin of victory on Saturday. In a paltry consolation to WKU, they outscored MTSU by one point in the 29ish other minutes of the game.
The Lady Raider defense, however, was the true engine for the MTSU's success on Saturday, holding the Lady Toppers to just 17.6 percent shooting in the first quarter and a 4-for-24 afternoon beyond the arc for the entire game, never allowing WKU any space on the perimeter. MTSU forced 13 turnovers, scoring 13 points off the WKU mistakes, all while holding WKU's top two scorers, Acacia Hayes and Destiny Salary, to a combined 9-for-29 from the field.
Gregory, who drew the assignment on Hayes, held the guard to just four points on 2-for-11 shooting with four turnovers.
"We just really heavily rely on each other," Gregory said of the MTSU defense. "When we play defense, it isn't just us against that person, it's all five of us together. We have help side, we've got cover downs and everything else."
But as dominant as Saturday was in the box score and to everyone in attendance at the Glass House, the full picture of MTSU's dominance of the rivalry only comes into focus when you take a step back.
Saturday's win was the eighth win in nine tries for MTSU over WKU, a stretch dating back to before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. It was the largest win ever for the Lady Raiders over WKU and tied for the largest ever in the series with a WKU win over MTSU in 1987. The 48 points the Lady Toppers did manage to score were the fewest allowed by MTSU in the rivalry since 1980.
The previous best scoring margin in the series for MTSU came on March 1, 2009, another game featuring a Lady Raiders' team coached by Rick Insell. MTSU triumphed behind 45 points from Alysha Clark, winning 87-61 in front of 5,307 fans in the Murphy Center. The win was Rick Insell's seventh over WKU. He now has 27 after Saturday's win, against just 12 losses to the Lady Toppers.
It's numbers like those that are why Insell called WKU merely "one of" MTSU's biggest rivals back in October. In recent history, for the vast majority of his tenure at the helm of the MTSU program, there's been little competition from WKU.
"I think (WKU) were on their heels wondering if they could play with us," Insell said. "They just got beat by Sam Houston. So, in their minds, they were probably wondering if they could play with us."
It's clear that WKU, like nearly every team MTSU has faced in Conference USA this season, could not play with the Lady Raiders. Thursday night's home game against Liberty could perhaps prove different. The size the Flames have in the post will be the first in CUSA that might be able to match up toe-to-toe with Anastasiia Boldyreva and Iullia Grabovskaia in the post.
The writer in me hopes that perhaps the Flames can put up a fight. There's only so many words I can write to describe blowouts like the one I witnessed on Saturday. But the MTSU fan in me?
Well, what can I say?
I certainly hope every other team on MTSU's schedule matches up like WKU did on Saturday.
Players Mentioned
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