After picking up a conference win in her 100th victory as head coach, Murray State Racers women’s basketball Head Coach Rechelle Turner reflected on her time leading up to this point.
“It hasn’t been easy, I don’t think anybody will say it has. But every player from day one that has put on a uniform [and] every coach that has been on my bench since day one deserves all of the credit for this,” Turner said. “They do a lot of the hard work, and we’re a team from top to bottom. No one is more important than the other. I just happen to be fortunate enough to have my name by the head coaching slot.”
Turner has been a staple of basketball in Murray, Kentucky for two decades. After earning the Racers’ ninth win of the season over the Bradley Braves on Thursday, Jan. 4, Turner also picked up the 100th win of her collegiate coaching career.
“I want to thank God for the opportunity, it is such a blessing to be the head coach at Murray State,” Turner said in the postgame interview.
Turner is a Calvert City native and attended Murray State. She played basketball as a Racer from 1991-1994, leading her team in assists in the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons and she earned OVC Commissioner’s Honor Roll three times in her tenure.
After college, Turner became the head coach of the Murray High School women’s basketball team. Turner became one of the winningest coaches to have coached in Kentucky, winning 460 games, the twentieth-most games in Kentucky state history, in her 21 years of coaching.
Turner led the Murray Tigers to 13 All-A Region 1 championships, four Region 1 titles, five District Four championships and in 2016 she led her team to the All-A State Championship.
She was a six-time All-Purchase Coach of the Year honoree and the KABC First Region Coach of the Year in 2014. She was inducted into the KABC Court of Honor and the Marshall County Hall of Fame in 2016.
On March 29, 2017, Turner signed on to be the University’s women’s basketball coach. After the Racers continued to fight for an above .500 record in the seasons prior, Turner was brought in to make a change in the program.
The Racers went 38-52 in Turner’s first three seasons. The turnaround was in progress, everything just needed to come together.
In the 2020-21 season, the Racers went 16-11, earning their first winning record since the 2011-12 season. They went to the semifinals that season, and again in the 2021-22 season.
The 2021-22 season was a monumental one, as Turner’s Racers tied the program record of wins in a season, winning 21 games. The Racers also appeared in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) that season for the first time since 2009.
The Racers moved into the Missouri Valley Conference in the 2022-23 season, and Turner’s Racers had to deal with some growing pains. The Racers went 15-16 last season in their first year in the conference.
Turner exited the 2022-23 season knowing what she can do to help improve her team, and ahead of the 2023-24 season, she changed her team’s philosophy to better suit the MVC.
“Accolades and numbers are great, but it’s the relationships and the memories that I’ve made in the past seven years here that I hold onto,” Turner said. “I want to keep winning because I want this team to experience the winning and be different.”
