Featured photo by Khori Williams
Story by Calvin White
If anyone asks MTSU women’s basketball head coach Rick Insell about Jalynn Gregory, no matter what the question is, he always interrupts mid-sentence with the same phrase: “She’s a winner.”
But that doesn’t mean stuffing the stat sheet every night. Being a winner means doing whatever it takes to help the team win, even if it means making sacrifices. When people think of Gregory’s time in Murfreesboro, at the front of their minds are the games where she rained countless 3-pointers that left the entire gym in awe.
When Insell was recruiting Gregory out of high school, he was criticized. Nearly three years later, Gregory is a 1,000-point scorer and is on pace to break the MTSU women’s basketball program record for made 3-pointers during one of the most dominant stretches in the history of Lady Raider basketball.
Gregory was a 2,000-point scorer, two-time Region MVP, state champion and State Tournament MVP at Macon County High School in Lafayette, TN.
“When I was recruiting Jalynn Gregory, there were people criticizing me for it,” Insell said after Gregory scored her 1,000th career point in a win over New Mexico State. “I think I know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to deliver the mail or fix a motor on a car, but we’ve won a lot of games and I thought Jalynn Gregory could play.”
Freshmen at most schools are typically thought of as players who come in and wait their turn for a year or two behind older, more experienced players. But not all freshmen are created equally. Gregory starting all 85 games of her college career means that she had her coaches’ trust from the start and has maintained that trust for nearly three years.
“There was a day in practice when she first got here where she was just going through the motions and just trying to fit in with everybody else,” MTSU associate head coach Matt Insell said. “We kind of had a come-to-Jesus type discussion in the middle of practice and said, ‘Look, if you’re just going to try to fit in, you probably need to go somewhere else because we need someone who can play and play right now.’”
Matt Insell knew that one of three things would happen the next day. Gregory was going to quit, her dad was going to call him or she was going to show up the next day and drop jaws.
Gregory took that meeting to heart.
“It was just one of those things where I took it upon myself to do, once again, what the team needed me to do,” Gregory said. “We needed somebody and I just stepped up into that role and I knew, at that point, where I was really going to make an impact was being able to guard people. So I just focused on my defense first and let the offense come to me.”
Gregory’s defining moment of her freshman season came when she stepped to the line and knocked down two free throws to tie the game with seven seconds remaining against Toledo in the WNIT quarterfinals. MTSU went on to win 73-71 and advance to the WNIT semifinals before falling to Seton Hall 74-73.
Moments like that have defined Gregory’s MTSU career. The free-throw line can be a lonely place for players sometimes. But in that moment, there was never a doubt about what was going to happen.
“There was no doubt who we were going to,” Matt Insell said. “That’s just her mentality. At the end, with the game right where it was, we knew if we got her the ball, she was either going to score or get fouled. I remember thinking ‘Should I watch, should I not watch?’ and this little freshman that weighs maybe 100 pounds, in front of 10,000 people… there was never a doubt.”
Every game, Gregory looks her opponent in the eye and says, “I am going to beat you.” That attitude has followed her since she was in high school. Gregory was named Class AA Region MVP in 2021, but Reagan Hurst of Upperman High School, who played in the same region as Gregory, was named Miss Basketball instead of Gregory.
Hurst plays at Tennessee Tech. When MTSU traveled to Cookeville in December to play the Golden Eagles, Matt Insell made sure to point out to Gregory in film sessions that Hurst won Miss Basketball instead of her.
“It’s just another game,” Gregory said. “There was a little bit of me that was motivated because I didn’t get Miss Basketball, but it also turned out good for me because I’d much rather win a State Tournament than get Miss Basketball.”
Entering the 2023 Conference USA Tournament, MTSU was 25-4 and heavy favorites to win the conference championship and make the NCAA Tournament.
Gregory averaged 17.7 points across three games and had her best performance in the championship game where she scored 24 points on 5-of-5 shooting from 3-point range. When Gregory was deciding where to go to college, Rick Insell told her that if she wanted to go to NCAA Tournaments, she would come to MTSU.
“It’s not easy,” Gregory said. “They hold us to a higher standard. It makes it more difficult which is why we get to where we get to.”
Gregory is known for having her best games on the biggest stages, including a 22-point performance in a 73-62 win over Tennessee. The win was MTSU’s first in program history over the Lady Vols.
Courtney Whitson has seen Gregory improve first-hand over their last three seasons as teammates, but her first impression of Gregory was when they were in high school.
Whitson recalls watching Gregory’s Macon County team play district rival Upperman in the 2018 State Championship Game.
“Obviously she (Gregory) was talented,” Whitson said on what stood out to her about Gregory. “Once you make it to the State Tournament everybody is going to be talented or have talented players because that’s what it takes to get there. She was not scared. She was not backing down. Every basket that was needed, timely, we see that now, she was getting it for them.”
A lot goes into being a winner. Success does not come easy in sports. The attention to detail needed to play for Rick Insell can be maddening. If Gregory hoped that the “come-to-Jesus” meetings would stop after her freshman year, she was wrong. Ironically, winning is one heck of a motivator.
“That’s not the way coach (Insell) rolls, so we all still get our fair share of butt-chewings every single day,” Whitson said. “But we know his intentions behind that because there are expectations. As a freshman, you’re not mature enough to be able to say ‘He wants to bring the best out of me. That’s why he’s in my face spitting at me.’ I think she’s grown a lot mentally to be able to handle our coaches’ hard coaching and take her game to a new level.”
Gregory does not care about records or statistics, but she will end her MTSU career by being a major contributor on a team that made the WNIT Semifinals and multiple NCAA Tournaments. She will have justified what it means to be a winner in every sense of the word.
Coming from a small town with a population of less than 6,000 people, not many from Gregory’s background have enjoyed the success that she has. She will tell you that accolades are not important to her, but Jalynn Gregory has lived up to every expectation that has ever been put on her at MTSU.
“She’s a winner.”
Calvin White is the sports editor for MTSU Sidelines. If you have information for a story, you can contact him at [email protected].
