Jakob Milani
Staff Writer
A one-sided game ended in another Murray State Racers win on Thursday, Jan. 28, when the Murray State women’s basketball team defeated the Tennessee State Tigers 77-58.
Before the game, the Racers honored junior guard Macey Turley with a commemorative basketball to celebrate reaching 1,000 points in her career. Turley is the 20th women’s basketball player to reach the milestone in Murray State history. Coming into the game, Turley’s total points sat at 1,075, ranking her 14th in Murray State women’s basketball history.
The Tigers scored the first two points of the game at the 8:30 mark, but the Racers’ defense didn’t allow them to score again until the 3:19 mark. In that time, Murray State went on a 10-0 run, including a three-pointer from junior guard Lex Mayes to start the run.
The Tigers finished the quarter shooting just 2-14 from the field and turned the ball over five times. The Racers shot 5-17 from the field and 5-6 from the free throw line and grabbed 15 rebounds in the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the Racers led the Tigers 16-4.
The Tigers answered in the second quarter with a 6-0 run of their own and forced a 3:58 scoring drought for the Racers. Murray State didn’t let up, though, and finished the quarter on a 7-0 run. The Racers grabbed 12 rebounds in the quarter and shot 6-6 from the free throw line. The Tigers shot 5-15 from the field in the quarter and grabbed eight rebounds. The Racers went into halftime up 31-16.
At the half, the Racers led the game in rebounds with 27, while TSU had 17 rebounds. The Racers also led the game in bench points with 10 points.
The Racers dominated in the third quarter, starting off with a 15-0 run that ran from 8:17 to 4:16. The Tigers managed to get hot toward the end of the quarter, where they made five of their last seven shot attempts. The Tigers finished the quarter with 18 points scored while the Racers finished with 29. The Racers went into the fourth with a commanding 60-34 lead.
The Racers closed it out in the fourth, scoring 17 points on 7-16 shooting and 3-5 shooting from the free throw line. TSU bounced back in the fourth, scoring 24 points in the quarter. Fifteen of those points came from senior guard Andreana Wrister, who shot 5-6 from three-point range in the quarter. It wasn’t enough to come back though, as the Racers walked away victorious, beating the Tigers with a score of 77-58.
Freshman guard Bria Sander-Woods finished the game with 11 points on 3-9 shooting and 2-5 shooting from three-point range. She also shot 3-4 from the free throw line, grabbed four rebounds and had three steals. She talked postgame about the team’s game plan for the game and how they planned to bounce back after their previous loss.
“Just to get tougher,” Sander-Woods said. “Our word today was persistence and that had to go with toughness because we got beat rebounding, so that was our main focus today. We had to work harder on that.”
Mayes talked postgame about the ceremony for Turley before the game and how much Turley contributes to the team on the court.
“I actually didn’t know about it till I saw it earlier today on Twitter,” Mayes said. “I’m not surprised at all. That’s exactly what you’d expect from her. She’s awesome. She can score at all three levels. She does exactly what we need her to and I’m super proud of her.”
Mayes finished the game with nine points on 3-8 shooting from three-point range. She said postgame she just makes sure she shoots when she’s open.
“I know that my teammates and coach both just ask that I shoot the ball when I’m open, shoot the ball with confidence,” Mayes said. “Even if I miss the first few or I go 0-5, I just gotta make sure I’m shooting the ball because eventually it will go in. You don’t miss forever.”
Many players got in the game in the win over TSU, including freshman center Lucia Operto, who got her first start of her career. Mayes said she’s confident in the team’s depth, adding that her favorite part of the season is how many lineups the team can run.
“When we play like we know how to play and when we’re getting everybody involved, we can beat a lot of teams,” Mayes said. “The flip side is that a lot of teams can beat us too if we don’t show up to play every night. I think the most important part is that yes, we are deeper than we have been the past few seasons, but we just have to bring that same effort, that same intensity and that same want to get everybody involved.”
Head Coach Rechelle Turner spoke postgame about the team’s win, saying that despite the win, she wasn’t happy with the team’s shooting performance.
“We didn’t shoot the ball very well,” Turner said. “For some reason it seems like the more open we are, the less we make, but I thought the kids did a good job of maintaining the drought offensively and continuing to get stops and rebounds. We owned the boards like we needed to… We really talked about that at halftime, how we need to lock in and how we need to extend this lead and we need to push it out and to make sure we get ourselves some confidence offensively.”
The Racers led the game in rebounds with 49 rebounds compared to TSU, who had 28 rebounds. Turner talked postgame about what it’s like to have so many great rebounders on the team.
“It’s great just having the size that we have,” Turner said. “It’s like Lucia. Lucia is where we need her to be defensively, but she’s not where she’s gonna be offensively, so we felt like with her going in that she would make things harder on them in the paint to start the game and she did. She got a couple blocks right off the bat. They didn’t feel comfortable going inside, we could extend our guard to take away their three. It was a big part of the reason we got so many stops in the beginning because they didn’t want to go inside… I’m excited about the players we have and the things we can do. We just need to start putting it all together.”
Murray State picks up another win, improving to 8-8 on the season and 5-6 in conference play. The Racers play at home on Saturday, Jan. 30, when they take on the Belmont Bruins at 4:30 p.m..
