Jakob Milani
Staff Writer
Freshman forward Katelyn Young led the Murray State women’s basketball team to a huge home comeback win against the SIUE Cougars on Saturday, Feb. 20.
The win gives the Racers a spot in the OVC Tournament in two weeks. The win also marks the Racers’ 10th conference win, the most since the 2007-08 season.
The Racers started the game off with a quick three-pointer from junior guard Macey Turley, but the Cougars answered with a layup on the next possession. Despite going up 6-2 after the quick start, the Racers weren’t able to score from 7:24 to 4:49. Later on in the quarter, the Cougars took a 18-14 lead with 2:07 left after making back-to-back three pointers. The Cougars held their lead through the end of the quarter and went into the second quarter leading the Racers 23-16.
SIUE tried to extend its lead in the second quarter, scoring the first two points of the quarter. The Racers shortened the lead later on with a three-pointer from junior forward Alexis Burpo, cutting the Cougars’ lead to five points with a score of 29-24. The Cougars held their lead through the end of the quarter, beating the Racers at halftime by a score of 35-26.
In the first half, the Cougars were all over the boards, grabbing 21 rebounds compared to the Racers’ 11. The Cougars also dominated in the paint, scoring 22 points in the paint while the Racers only scored 14.
The Cougars seemed to take over the third quarter early, extending their lead to 13 just 2:40 into the quarter. However, the Racers’ defense stepped up in the quarter, allowing just four more points through the end of the quarter. The Racers eventually took the lead with a 13-0 run that lasted the final 5:08 of the quarter, with the first six points of the run coming from freshman forward Hannah McKay. Thanks to their outstanding run, the Racers led the Cougars 53-47 heading into the fourth quarter.
The Racers defense held the lead down in the fourth quarter, holding the Cougars to just 13 points with nine of those points coming in the final 1:30 of the quarter. The Racers scored 15 in the quarter on 6-15 shooting. Despite the Cougars’ 9-0 run to end the quarter, the Racers defeated SIUE by a score of 68-60.
Junior guard Mikia Keith led the Cougars in scoring for the game with 20 points on 8-16 shooting from the field and 3-7 shooting from three-point range. Sophomore forwards Ajulu Thatha and Mikayla Kinnard each scored 12 points for the Cougars. Thatha also grabbed eight rebounds and shot 4-9 from the field.
Junior guard Lex Mayes scored 11 points for the Racers in the game, shooting 4-10 from the field and 3-9 from three-point range. Burpo finished with nine points, five rebounds and six steals. Turley and Mckay finished the game with six points each.
Young finished the game with 25 points and 10 rebounds, shooting 10-14 from the field and 5-7 from the free-throw line. She spoke postgame about the team’s push in the third quarter, giving a lot of credit to Burpo and her defense.
“Burpo was a huge part of it with her kicks whenever we’re trapping,” Young said. “I always love seeing her jumping up and yelling on defense. I can always hear her even when I’m in the back.”
Young finished the game with her eighth double-double of the season. She talked postgame about her playstyle, saying there’s always room for her to improve.
“I’m still just trying to work down low, getting that game stronger,” Young said. “You can always get better. I still try to get every rebound too, every single rebound.”
Head Coach Rechelle Turner spoke postgame about the team’s win, saying it may not have been pretty, but a win is a win.
“It’s a good thing you get points for style because it wasn’t pretty in any shape, form or fashion,” Turner said. “I definitely challenged them at halftime. I said I don’t care what it looks like, it can be as ugly as can be but we gotta find a way to win this game. We’ve worked too hard to put ourselves in this position and let this one go. The effort and the resilience of our team in that second half was second to none… every player that stepped on the court did something positive and that’s what you have to have.”
Turner also talked about Young’s freshman campaign, saying Young may have gone through a slump, but she has pushed to get better and better.
“She kinda went through a little bit of a slump,” Turner said. “There were about three or four games where I didn’t think she played very well and I was kinda hard on her. Mentally, she was hard on herself. She’s definitely answered the challenge. I challenged her at the beginning of the week to win Freshman of the Week this week, I said ‘You’ve got to understand that if you can do that, we can get two wins.’ I told her to get every rebound and score every basket… we’re gonna hope she can get Freshman of the Week this week.”
The Racers improve to 13-10 on the season and 10-8 in conference play. The Racers now have just two games left on the season. Their next game will be on Thursday, Feb. 25, at Jacksonville State, starting at 4:30 p.m.
