COLUMN: “They’re not going to quit”

BATON ROUGE, La. — Perhaps the poet Maya Angelou's best-known quote is one that shows her tremendous insight into how we remember the past: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

It's an idea that almost seems quaint to apply to college basketball, but I can think of no idea better than Angelou's to express how I'll remember Middle Tennessee women's basketball's 71-69 win over Louisville in the First Round of the 2024 NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament. Not for the plays, not the words, but for how the Lady Raiders made us feel or how they made themselves feel.

"This group right here, they've got so much grit," Head Coach Rick Insell said. "They're not going to quit."

In the minutes after Friday's win, all the big plays still seem fresh. They're Savannah Wheeler's trio of threes in the third quarter, the final of which saw her step back into wide open space to pull MTSU within three. They're all 14 of Jalynn Gregory's points in the first half to just keep MTSU in a game they trailed by as many as 18 points. They're Anastasiia Boldyreva's midrange block to start a fast break. Each play that rallied the Lady Raiders into the game, or pushed them ahead, still burns brightly in our minds.

But those memories of those plays will fade, just as the words from the MTSU coaching staff faded in the hours after the game. Or in the case of the first-quarter timeout break, just minutes after the huddle ended for Gregory.

"Honestly, it's a blur," Gregory said when asked what the coaching message was at the end of the first quarter, with MTSU trailing 28-12. "If I had to guess, it was probably that we weren't going to lose the game. We had to step up and take control, just like we have this past year. It was probably just telling us to lock in."

Sitting behind the MTSU bench in-game can be a bit chaotic. Between the cheers of their teammates, the play calls from Rick Insell, the defensive callouts from Matt Insell and Tom Hodges and the quick reminders from Kim Brewton and Nina Davis, it's an easy place to get overwhelmed if you haven't experienced it. This team is used to that noise, of course, but they hadn't experienced a deficit quite like the 38-20 one they faced on Friday at the 4:18 mark of the second quarter.

What struck me in that moment, as the Lady Raider defense locked in for a 7-0 run to end the frame, cutting the lead at halftime to just 11 points, was just how calm everyone was on the MTSU bench. To be sure, it wasn't what most would consider calm on the outside. Only those of us that watch the Lady Raiders week-in and week-out know that much action from the coaching staff is business as usual.

But the fact the coaches were still engaged, the bench was still engaged and the players on the court were responding? It kept me totally at peace. I would've been scared had there been silence.

"In the first half, I missed a lot of easy baskets," Savannah Wheeler said. "I mean, the first play of the game, I missed a layup. Three or four layups I missed in the first half. At halftime they just kept telling me I have to hit those."

Wheeler certainly "hit those" in the second half, where she scored 20 of her 22 points, only missing two shots from the field after missing six in the first 20 minutes. But even her overall stats from Friday will fade, confined to a web page on a successor to GoBlueRaiders.com or in the back pages of a future MTSU record book. Gregory's 24 points, her 4-for-7 day from three, Boldyreva's double-double, Courtney Whitson's 1-for-6 day beyond the arc (though her fourth quarter three-pointer to put the Lady Raiders up six was as close to a dagger as MTSU shot all afternoon), all of it will just be numbers on a stat sheet in a few years' time.

But for those of us who were in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, who watched on ESPN2, or listened on the Blue Raider Radio Network, who exchanged the memes, the highlight clips, the photos of exaltation of a program finally breaking through the first round after 17 years, we won't forget the poise the Lady Raiders had. The guts to keep driving, keep attacking and stay the course against overwhelming odds in a comeback that, at the final buzzer, was the third-biggest comeback in NCAA Tournament history (by the end of the day Friday, Iowa State's 20-point comeback against Maryland would relegate it merely tied for fourth).

And ultimately, the pride they've made all of us feel all season. A season that got at least one game longer with the win.

"It came down to guts and willpower, who was going to will themselves to victory," Insell said. "I'm awfully proud of our young ladies."

Middle Tennesee State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Anastasiia Boldyreva

Jalynn Gregory

Savannah Wheeler

Courtney Whitson

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