Middle Tennesee State University Athletics
COLUMN: “There’s not any of them I’m not proud of right now”
3/10/2024 5:59:00 PM | General, Women's Basketball
From the outside, the Lady Raiders’ CUSA dominance might look easy. Those on the inside know just how hard it has been.
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Your 2023-24 Lady Raiders, 2007-08 UTEP, 2010-11 Houston and 2018-19 Rice: What do those four teams have in common?
Your 2023-24 Lady Raiders and the 2023-24 squads for UConn, Fairfield, South Carolina, Gonzaga, FGCU, Jackson State and South Dakota State: What do these eight teams have in common?
The answer for both: conference play perfection. All eleven of those teams ran through their conference's gauntlet in a given season and came out the other side without a loss. In the 2023-24 Lady Raiders' case, that was a 16-0 mark that was clinched with another dominant win on Saturday, dispatching Louisiana Tech 79-58 before it was even noon in Murfreesboro.
"There's not any of them I'm not proud of right now," head coach Rick Insell said of his players. "To go through a season undefeated, it's a grind, a grind, a grind."
The grind part of the equation most people understand. I wrote about it myself just under a month ago in this very column. Every college athlete puts in hours upon hours each week of work to play at their very best, whether that's early-morning lifts, watching film between classes, working through the scout in practice, getting treatment to recover, to say nothing of the travel schedules these teams in modern-day, Division I athletic conferences. None of that, for any team, is easy.
But the intensity required to stay on that grind, at the level of focus needed to be successful, for 16 games in a conference season, doesn't happen very often. And while yes, the teams that have that sort of focus also need a certain level of talent to achieve such success, the work put in is often the far more important part of how that record comes to be.
It's why Insell's pride in his team could barely be contained on Saturday, with the acknowledgment that there's still work to be done next week in Huntsville, Ala. at the CUSA Tournament, where MTSU will have to beat three teams for the third time this season to claim the CUSA autobid into the NCAA Tournament.
"Sometimes I had to beat people four times," Insell said of his high school coaching career and the idea of it being difficult to knock off a team three times in a row. "I've never bought into that. A lot of coaches do buy into it. I think that's something you put into your players' heads. As far as the way we do things, it's the next game."
It'd be easy to finish the conversation there, highlighting just how hard the Lady Raiders worked this season and hoping to continue that success in the Rocket City. Particularly given the way MTSU dominated Conference USA this season, winning their conference games by an average of nearly 24 points a night, only playing one conference game that had a final score margin in single digits and snapping up a CUSA record 10 Conference USA Player of the Week awards (five for Savannah Wheeler, two each for Jalynn Gregory and Anastasiia Bolydreva and one for Ta'Mia Scott).
But contrary to what might be popular opinion, dominant teams have plenty of adversity to get through in every season. The Lady Raiders were no different.
Sure, MTSU returned four of their five starters from their CUSA title team a year ago. But the one they didn't, Alexis Whittington, was a five-year starter who was one of the best defensive players on the perimeter in the league. Jalynn Gregory and Ta'Mia Scott both needed to develop to continue the defensive style that's made MTSU so successful under Insell.
Yes, MTSU had preseason player of the year (and likely 2023-24 Player of the Year) Savannah Wheeler at point guard. But the Lady Raiders went through all of 2023-24 with no true point guard backup after losing Courtney Blakely to the transfer portal and having Top 100 recruit, Jada Harrison, miss her freshman season due to injury. Gregory and Sifa Ineza have been able to put in some minutes at PG when Wheeler has been in foul trouble, but the lion's share of minutes at the most important position in Insell's offense have all fallen on Wheeler's shoulders.
And, oh yeah, most dominant teams also don't have to replace the conference Sixth-Player of the Year from last year's team that was also a WNBA draft pick, like the Lady Raiders have had to do following Kseniya Malaskha's graduation. The exponential growth of Anastasiia Boldyreva, particularly defensively, and the addition and growth of Iullia Grabovskaia off the bench have proven to keep production high for the 5-spot in the Lady Raider lineup.
None of those challenges that came up for MTSU this season would've been solved without two things: the hard work of the players asked to continue the Lady Raider legacy to grow as basketball players and the coaching of Rick Insell and his staff to develop players, new and returning, to have an even better year than the one they had before.
Let's go back to those three teams at the top: 2007-08 UTEP, 2010-11 Houston and 2018-19 Rice. You might've figured out they were the previous CUSA undefeated WBB teams. What you might not have known is all three of their head coaches (Keitha Adams, Todd Buchanan and Tina Langley) all won CUSA Coach of the Year for leading their teams to such an accomplishment. Two of them, ironically, are still in the league years later, with Adams coming back to UTEP after a stint at Wichita State and Buchanan now on Greg Collins' staff at WKU.
I don't have a vote for Coach of the Year. That award is only voted on by the nine CUSA coaches. And while Insell does not care, I think it'd be unfortunate if those coaches didn't come together to recognize the work he and his staff have put in this year.
The Lady Raiders' players work this season? That's undeniable. The stats prove it and I suspect the awards come Monday, when CUSA announces the All-Conference honorees, will show it. But those same stats show the work of Rick Insell and his staff (Matt Insell, Kim Brewton, Nina Davis, Tom Hodges and Shaun McKinney) just as much as it does their players.
And with the next closest team in the CUSA standings five games back of the undefeated Lady Raiders, it'd be shame if those nine coaches collectively don't recognize that fact on Monday.
Your 2023-24 Lady Raiders and the 2023-24 squads for UConn, Fairfield, South Carolina, Gonzaga, FGCU, Jackson State and South Dakota State: What do these eight teams have in common?
The answer for both: conference play perfection. All eleven of those teams ran through their conference's gauntlet in a given season and came out the other side without a loss. In the 2023-24 Lady Raiders' case, that was a 16-0 mark that was clinched with another dominant win on Saturday, dispatching Louisiana Tech 79-58 before it was even noon in Murfreesboro.
"There's not any of them I'm not proud of right now," head coach Rick Insell said of his players. "To go through a season undefeated, it's a grind, a grind, a grind."
The grind part of the equation most people understand. I wrote about it myself just under a month ago in this very column. Every college athlete puts in hours upon hours each week of work to play at their very best, whether that's early-morning lifts, watching film between classes, working through the scout in practice, getting treatment to recover, to say nothing of the travel schedules these teams in modern-day, Division I athletic conferences. None of that, for any team, is easy.
But the intensity required to stay on that grind, at the level of focus needed to be successful, for 16 games in a conference season, doesn't happen very often. And while yes, the teams that have that sort of focus also need a certain level of talent to achieve such success, the work put in is often the far more important part of how that record comes to be.
It's why Insell's pride in his team could barely be contained on Saturday, with the acknowledgment that there's still work to be done next week in Huntsville, Ala. at the CUSA Tournament, where MTSU will have to beat three teams for the third time this season to claim the CUSA autobid into the NCAA Tournament.
"Sometimes I had to beat people four times," Insell said of his high school coaching career and the idea of it being difficult to knock off a team three times in a row. "I've never bought into that. A lot of coaches do buy into it. I think that's something you put into your players' heads. As far as the way we do things, it's the next game."
It'd be easy to finish the conversation there, highlighting just how hard the Lady Raiders worked this season and hoping to continue that success in the Rocket City. Particularly given the way MTSU dominated Conference USA this season, winning their conference games by an average of nearly 24 points a night, only playing one conference game that had a final score margin in single digits and snapping up a CUSA record 10 Conference USA Player of the Week awards (five for Savannah Wheeler, two each for Jalynn Gregory and Anastasiia Bolydreva and one for Ta'Mia Scott).
But contrary to what might be popular opinion, dominant teams have plenty of adversity to get through in every season. The Lady Raiders were no different.
Sure, MTSU returned four of their five starters from their CUSA title team a year ago. But the one they didn't, Alexis Whittington, was a five-year starter who was one of the best defensive players on the perimeter in the league. Jalynn Gregory and Ta'Mia Scott both needed to develop to continue the defensive style that's made MTSU so successful under Insell.
Yes, MTSU had preseason player of the year (and likely 2023-24 Player of the Year) Savannah Wheeler at point guard. But the Lady Raiders went through all of 2023-24 with no true point guard backup after losing Courtney Blakely to the transfer portal and having Top 100 recruit, Jada Harrison, miss her freshman season due to injury. Gregory and Sifa Ineza have been able to put in some minutes at PG when Wheeler has been in foul trouble, but the lion's share of minutes at the most important position in Insell's offense have all fallen on Wheeler's shoulders.
And, oh yeah, most dominant teams also don't have to replace the conference Sixth-Player of the Year from last year's team that was also a WNBA draft pick, like the Lady Raiders have had to do following Kseniya Malaskha's graduation. The exponential growth of Anastasiia Boldyreva, particularly defensively, and the addition and growth of Iullia Grabovskaia off the bench have proven to keep production high for the 5-spot in the Lady Raider lineup.
None of those challenges that came up for MTSU this season would've been solved without two things: the hard work of the players asked to continue the Lady Raider legacy to grow as basketball players and the coaching of Rick Insell and his staff to develop players, new and returning, to have an even better year than the one they had before.
Let's go back to those three teams at the top: 2007-08 UTEP, 2010-11 Houston and 2018-19 Rice. You might've figured out they were the previous CUSA undefeated WBB teams. What you might not have known is all three of their head coaches (Keitha Adams, Todd Buchanan and Tina Langley) all won CUSA Coach of the Year for leading their teams to such an accomplishment. Two of them, ironically, are still in the league years later, with Adams coming back to UTEP after a stint at Wichita State and Buchanan now on Greg Collins' staff at WKU.
I don't have a vote for Coach of the Year. That award is only voted on by the nine CUSA coaches. And while Insell does not care, I think it'd be unfortunate if those coaches didn't come together to recognize the work he and his staff have put in this year.
The Lady Raiders' players work this season? That's undeniable. The stats prove it and I suspect the awards come Monday, when CUSA announces the All-Conference honorees, will show it. But those same stats show the work of Rick Insell and his staff (Matt Insell, Kim Brewton, Nina Davis, Tom Hodges and Shaun McKinney) just as much as it does their players.
And with the next closest team in the CUSA standings five games back of the undefeated Lady Raiders, it'd be shame if those nine coaches collectively don't recognize that fact on Monday.
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