Featured photo by Erin Douglas
Story by Calvin White
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BATON ROUGE, La- Middle Tennessee women’s basketball (30-4) tied the third-largest comeback in women’s NCAA Tournament history after clawing back from down 18 points to beat Louisville 71-69 for the program’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2007.
For most of the first half, Louisville (24-10) took MTSU completely out of its offense. The Blue Raiders hardly found any open looks and missed the ones they did find. The Cardinals blitzed MTSU and took a 28-12 lead after the first quarter.
“Someone yesterday asked about our slow starts and I said I hope we didn’t have one,” MTSU head coach Rick Insell said after the win. “Well, we had one. I thought they [Louisville] came out ready to play. I knew Jeff [Walz] was going to have them ready and I knew that he was going to use the last time they played us as motivation. We tried to get that across to our players and we had some defensive assignments missed and they hit some great shots.”
Jalynn Gregory was the lone bright spot for MTSU in the first half. She buried three 3-pointers to counter Louisville’s interior attack and scored 14 of MTSU’s 27 first-half points in order to keep the Blue Raiders afloat as Louisville led 38-27 at halftime.
Savannah Wheeler went nuclear in the third quarter and outscored Louisville 14-12 by herself to flip the game in the Blue Raiders’ favor. The Cardinals continued going under MTSU’s screens, leaving Wheeler wide open beyond the arc. She was a perfect 3-of-3 from deep in the frame to give MTSU a 51-50 advantage after three quarters of play.
“In the first half, I missed a lot of easy baskets,” Wheeler said. “The first play of the game, I missed a layup. Three of four layups I missed in the first half. At halftime, they just kept telling me that I have to hit those. We had a slow start in the first quarter but I just kept telling myself to keep staying aggressive and to play within myself and eventually one’s going to fall.”
Louisville post player Olivia Cochran gave MTSU problems on the interior all game until she picked up her fourth foul with 5:53 remaining in the third quarter. The Blue Raiders outscored Louisville 14-6 after Cochran subbed out before returning to start the fourth quarter.
The fourth quarter was textbook NCAA Tournament plays with the game coming down to the final shot. MTSU led 64-56 with 2:07 remaining after a layup from Anastasiia Boldyreva. Louisville then went on a 6-0 run to cut the Blue Raiders’ lead to 64-62 with 53 seconds remaining.
MTSU made its free throws late to maintain the lead, but the Cardinals didn’t go down without an attempt at their own March Madness moment. Sydney Taylor drained a 3-pointer that pulled Louisville within two with five seconds remaining. Ta’Mia Scott then missed two free throws that left Louisville with a half-court prayer to win the game.
Merissah Russell’s heave ricocheted too strong off the backboard and bounced off the front of the rim, which secured MTSU’s win and sent the Blue Raiders into an on-court celebration.
Everyone in the program still had an open wound from last year’s 82-60 opening-round loss to Colorado where MTSU was bullied in every sense of the word. Insell and the returning players have spent every practice since then talking about the things that cost them against Colorado which was size and physicality.
“Last year Colorado came in and they were aggressive,” Insell said on Thursday in NCAA media availability. “They got up the line. They kind of bullied you. We knew from the very beginning this year that we were going to have to get tougher on the perimeter with our guards. We knew we were going to have to get more physical inside. So that’s really what we’ve been working on from last April to right now is we knew again we’d have a great chance to be in the tournament, and we knew how some of the teams wanted to play us.”
MTSU got its bell rung early and after dominating the second half, showed that it belonged. Under Insell, the Blue Raiders are in the NCAA Tournament more than they’re not but just making the Big Dance isn’t enough.
With LSU’s 70-60 win over Rice, MTSU has a date with the reigning national champions on Sunday for a chance to go to the first Sweet 16 in program history. Although it has dominated its opponents for most of the season, MTSU has no problem playing the role of David. The NCAA Tournament is built on the fact that Goliath is not unbeatable.
Calvin White is the sports editor for MTSU Sidelines. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, and follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines and on X and Instagram at @mtsusidelines. Also, sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
