Turner ready for challenging schedule
WBB: The Racers could have up to four Quad 1 opportunities in the non-conference
After the Daytona Beach Classic released their matchups on Monday, Murray State’s women finally had a completed non-conference schedule for the 2025-26 season. With the potential of having at least four Quad 1 games before the Racers reach Valley play, Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner says she likes how her team’s non-conference slate came together.
“We were waiting for our Daytona Beach matchups, and we had asked for two Power 4 (opponents) to try to upgrade the schedule,” Turner said. “George Mason (#45 in the NET Rankings last season) finished well ahead of several Power 4’s last year, and they have their two leading scorers back. That's going to be a great opportunity for us on a neutral floor. Then, obviously, you’ve got Boston College, which is another great opportunity for us to prove ourselves. South Dakota State is one of the best mid-major teams in America. The challenge of going to Illinois, it’s something that you kind of earmark — opportunities to get yourself that at-large bid if something happens and you don't win the conference (tournament).”
Of Murray State’s 11 non-conference games, only three of them are at home against Division I opponents. The games with Memphis and Saint Louis are return games from a pair of home-and-home series that started last season. The matchup with UAB opens a two-year series with the Blazers. Coming off the program’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2008, Turner says getting home games this year was a challenge.
“We were really trying to get Power 4 (schools) here, and that's been extremely difficult,” Turner said. For example, Belmont is hosting Duke and Kentucky this season. Drake will host Creighton, Iowa State and Minnesota. Murray State has hosted one Power 4 school in the last 25 years — and that was Indiana in 2012.
“Obviously, we're not a destination place in Murray, Kentucky,” Turner continued. “I've had a lot of no’s. We're not going to give up on trying to make that happen, because we need home games, and we want to challenge our team by playing those tough games. The one thing that I've learned over the years, the more you win, the harder scheduling can be, and especially with the scheduling parameters that are coming forward, starting next year on the women's side in The Valley, it's going to make scheduling difficult.”
Turner says she dangled the graduation of Katelyn Young, Murray State’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, to potential opponents, but not having KTG in uniform didn’t make coming to Murray any more appealing to those schools.
“(Young graduating) has a lot of gravity, but it still didn't have enough gravity to get them to play us at home,” Turner chuckled. “I think everybody has to know that that's a big part of why in previous (years), Illinois wouldn't play us, and it's understandable. You’ve got a hometown kid (in Young, who grew up less than 30 minutes from Champaign), and you can't take the opportunity (to possibly lose a game against a Young-led team). They've had a coaching change since then, and they offered to play us. I just think that scheduling as a whole is difficult for everybody, because, again, you're trying to get home games, but then you're trying to challenge yourself, and you're trying to put yourself in a position to maybe have a few neutral-site games. I just don't think people understand the ins and outs that go in to actually putting a schedule together.”
For the first time in ten years, Murray State will be playing in a multi-team event when they travel to Daytona during Thanksgiving week to play George Mason and Boston College. With games on back-to-back days, it provides a tournament-type setting like the Racers will face in March — plus, a little sunshine doesn’t hurt either.
“I think there's a lot of stuff you can get out of it,” Turner said. “The way the games are going to be played, at a neutral-site, we’re going to play games earlier in the morning, some in the middle of the day. We also try to give our kids an experience every year, and they said they wanted to go the beach. We looked up how we could get something out of a trip, but also give them something that they want right before Thanksgiving to bring some joy into what's a long season.”
Have u heard when the conference schedule might be out?