Middle Tennessee women’s basketball (23-6, 15-1 CUSA) closed out the home season winning 57-35 against UTEP (10-17, 3-13 CUSA) on senior day.
MTSU’s seniors ranged from Alina Erike, a one-year Blue Raider, to Jalynn Gregory and Anastasiia Boldyreva, four-year starters. With 108 wins and counting, the senior class is the winningest class in program history.
“You come out of your office every day to practice and come out for games, you know this bunch is going to show up,” Middle Tennessee head coach Rick Insell said. “There have been some downs but there have been a lot more ups than some downs. I’m very proud to have been their coach, we got some games left and what we got to do is go into those games and take care of business.”
Gregory played all but one game in her college career and Boldyreva played every game, starting all but three of them.
The culture changed the year before and the team adapted to it with the focus on sticking together over the last four years, Gregory said.
Though it was senior day, junior guard Ta’Mia Scott led the way for the Blue Raiders with 25 points. She took control there after Nas [Boldyreva] went down and kept was in the game, Insell said about Scott.
UTEP’s Luisa Vydrova fouled Boldyreva, knocking her to the ground where she hit her head on the court two minutes into the game. Boldyreva returned to the game near the end of the first quarter and went on to play 32 minutes with eight blocks.
“She’s going to have a knot on her head, but she ran the floor, she knew what was going on, she’s tough,” Insell said.
Both sides in the third quarter had trouble scoring with MTSU adding eight points and UTEP adding five coming out of halftime.
After the third, Gregory said to focus on the principles and keep shooting the ball, Scott said. The Blue Raiders scored 23 points in the fourth quarter on 8/12 shooting and 3/4 from beyond the arc.
MTSU has two more road games against Liberty (21-6, 14-2 CUSA) and FIU (11-16, 7-9 CUSA) next week before the conference tournament. The Liberty game is a must-win to clinch the first-place seed when the tournament starts.
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