MTSU women’s basketball head coach Rick Insell never traveled far from his Middle Tennessee roots.
Insell, a Woodbury, Tennessee, native spent his childhood splitting his time between Woodbury and nearby Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
He’d often stay with his grandmother and at night they would turn the radio on to listen to Blue Raider basketball.
The signal straight from the station beamed MTSU basketball into his youth. From a young age, Insell seemed destined to lead Middle Tennessee.
“I’m not going to say I grew up thinking I’d be the head coach of the Blue Raiders, but in a sense I did,” Insell said.
After 21 years at the helm of Lady Raiders’ basketball, Insell announced his retirement early Thursday, but his love of the game never left from those early days.
After graduating from MTSU in 1977, Insell moved to Shelbyville, Tennessee, for the head girls’ basketball coaching position at Shelbyville Central High School.
The newly minted head coach made the state tournament in his second season, falling in the first round to Pearl High School.
The first of his 10 state championships wouldn’t come until 1986, when Shelbyville defeated Oak Ridge 69-51. Insell went on to win four championships from 1989-1992 and again from 2000-2004.
In 2005, MTSU hired Chris Massaro as the Director of Athletics, and his first task was to hire a women’s basketball coach. Massaro didn’t have to look far or long, hiring Insell as the seventh head coach of the Lady Raiders.
“When we hired Rick, we knew we were bringing in one of the most respected and accomplished coaches in the game, but what he has built here has exceeded even those high expectations,” Massaro said in a press release.
For Insell, his first goal at MTSU was to make the NCAA tournament and not let the program down, he said.
The Lady Raiders achieved that goal in each of Insell’s first two seasons, making the NCAA tournament and winning in the first round against Gonzaga University in 2007.
“We had some really good players that played hard and played for what’s on the front of their jersey,” Insell said. “I’ll forever be indebted to them, because they set the standard of what was going to happen here.”
Insell’s Lady Raiders continued to hold and raise that standard in the seasons that followed. He became a nine-time hall of fame inductee and the winningest head coach in program history, as he amassed 505 wins, 10 conference championships and 12 NCAA tournament appearances.
As recently as Jan. 23, Insell made history once again, becoming the only coach to win 500 games at both the college and high school level.
But even after all his success, the lifelong MTSU fan never thought about leaving for a different program.
“I never had any intentions of coming here and going other places,” Insell said. “I had other places call, but I didn’t get this job to go anywhere else.”
In retirement, Insell plans to focus on his health and spend as much time as possible with his 13 grandchildren.
The Lady Raiders will still be led by an Insell, with Rick’s son, associate head coach Matt Insell, named as the next head coach. Though he’s stepping away as the head coach, it’s hard to imagine that Rick Insell will stray far from the MTSU bench.
“I think they’re going to have to recruit maybe in a position or two but what they got coming back, those kids are going to get stronger,” Insell said. “You won’t even know them, they will be the same kids, but you won’t even know them.”
Insell’s retirement won’t officially begin until after MTSU’s postseason run. The 74-year-old will lead his Lady Raiders through the 2026 Women’s National Invitational Tournament. Middle Tennessee is set to host the winner of St. Bonaventure University and Drexel University in the WNIT’s second round early next week.
Lead photo illustration by Brett Walker. Lead images from Sidelines’ archives.
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