"It’s time to be chased instead of being the chaser"
WBB: For the first time, the Racers are learning to be the defending Valley champs
Pat Summitt won 1,098 games and eight national championships during her legendary coaching career at Tennessee. Of all the knowledge she passed down over the years, there are few pearls of wisdom Summitt delivered that mean more to fellow coaches than this:
“It’s harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb. Continue to seek new goals.”
Summitt was a coaching idol of Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner. For decades, they almost appeared to be facsimiles of one another — successful, fiery, passionate and letting nothing stand in the way of getting the best out of their players and themselves.
Tennessee, with Summitt leading the way, won three-straight national championships in the mid-nineties, and then won back-to-back titles again in 2007 and 2008. Summitt made sure her Lady Vols never became satisfied with winning because there was always another mountain to climb.
After eight years as Murray State’s head coach, Turner led the Racers to their first-ever Missouri Valley Conference championship this past March, and took the program to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008. Turner’s journey was long — and at times, difficult doesn’t begin to sum it up. Two months ago, Murray State finally climbed to the Missouri Valley Conference’s mountaintop, but Turner insists that is not the end of the journey for this Racer program.
“Complacency is not a word that I or my staff have in our vocabulary,” Turner said. “From the minute we got back from Oklahoma (and the NCAA Tournament), we've gone to work. I think some evidence of that has been shown in who we've been able to get out of the portal to add to our team. We've had a lot of great meetings with our players that are coming back and they've been in the gym every single day working. We just talk about what’s next. You can't look in the rearview mirror because that team was unbelievable. It forever will be one of the greatest teams Murray State Women's Basketball has ever had — but that's never going to happen again. Those people in that locker room, it's never going to be the same, so you have to enjoy it, you have to be proud of it, but you have to move on.”
Part of moving on is realizing the prism people look through to see the Murray State program has changed. This is no longer a program hoping to realize their championship dreams — it is now simply a championship program. With that crown comes the burden of not only wearing a bullseye, but also the burden of trying to meet their own expectations.
“I think we’re just preparing to take everyone's best shot,” Murray State junior guard Halli Poock said when asked about the team’s summer’s goals. “We know everyone's going to give us their best shot, because now we have the championship title, and everyone wants to beat us. I think just preparing for that, and hopefully everyone has a fire to win a second one, and not just be satisfied with one.”
While Turner always has a proverbial blowtorch nearby if she feels the need to stoke the flames of her team, Poock doesn’t believe her coach will need to use it.
“Us — all of the players,” Poock said, when asked who is in charge of keeping that fire burning hot. “We can’t be coach-led or it's not going to work.”
Two Racers are approaching this offseason with a different perspective on winning another title. Freshman Cam Hoover tore her ACL last summer and had to miss the entire championship season. Junior Destiny Thomas tore her own ACL in January and was unable to finish out the year on the floor. Getting to cut down the nets again this season, but doing it in uniform, is incredibly important to both of them.
“That feeling is just something that you can't even describe,” Thomas said. “We talk about it all the time. Why would you not want to do it again? Obviously, the target's on our back. I feel like we have great competitors and people coming in —transfers and freshmen. Even the returners, we just want to win. The culture that we have, we hate losing. As long as I'm here, I know for sure that we're going to want to win and our goal is to get back and even go farther in the NCAA Tournament.”
“I've been watching for almost a year,” Hoover added. “I just want to let it all out, and try to keep what we have going. We have standards and expectations, and I'm just excited to be back on the court. I don't need much motivation. I'm so excited to be playing again. Obviously, this season is huge, and we would love to keep that going for sure.”
The 2025-26 edition of the Murray State Racers will go through intake on Monday, and then their first official workouts begin Tuesday. It was only 63 days ago when the Racers saw last season end in the NCAA Tournament. In 163 days, next season officially begins, and Turner says there will be no corners cut as her team begins their next climb up the Missouri Valley’s mountain.
“The work’s the work,” Turner said. “We continue to work every single day to put together the best roster that we can. When they all get here in June, it's going to be about cohesiveness. It’s going to be about culture and chemistry, all the things that you have to have in order to be successful. We're going to have the talent. The roster has talent. On paper, we're going to have talent, but none of that matters if the coaching staff cannot find a way to make those people want to play for each other and play for the name on the front of the jersey. That's what helped us be successful this past year and that's what we're looking for to help carry us through. It'll be difficult. We will have a target on our back every single night — we know that. It’s time to be chased instead of being the chaser and it's time for our kids and our staff to step up and understand the importance of continuing to keep this going. That is the expectation for Murray State Women's Basketball.”