Last Saturday the Middle Tennessee women’s team beat Rice by 3 PTS in the C-USA tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to this week’s NCAA tournament. The Blue Raiders lost 3 of 4 games by double-digits heading into early-March but turned things around over the past 10 days to claim the school’s 1st NCAA tourney bid since 2016. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with Coach Rick Insell about being a Hall of Famer and making the NCAA tourney.
You have won more than 1000 games during the past 4 decades: what is the key to being a successful coach? You need to have good players who buy into your system, which I have been fortunate to have. We have brought in some young ladies who understood what we wanted to do.
775 of those wins came at Shelbyville Central High School: what is the biggest difference between coaching in high school vs. coaching in college? I always thought that there was a big difference but my wife humbled me because she said she could not see any difference. Basketball is basketball: you need fundamentals, discipline, etc. Even if you have a good skill set you have to be sound in all facets of your game. Some players (both male and female) do not want to do that after doing their thing on the asphalt: you need people who understand what you want to do as a team.
110 of those wins came in a row: how on earth did you do that?! We never once scheduled a patsy who we thought was an automatic win. There were some of those in the conference but we scheduled the best non-conference teams that we could so that we would be ready to play in the postseason. You never saw Coach Pat Summitt play a rinky-dink team: she got beat a few years…but she dominated in the NCAA tourney. We did not view any 1 game as more important than another. I do not know if we ever mentioned the streak while it was happening, even though the media mentioned it. We won 72 in a row, then lost 1, then won 110 in a row.
In 2017 you were inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame: where does that rank among the highlights of your career? It was another humbling day, especially when I got the call from Debbie Antonelli. I talk to her a lot so I did not think anything of it, and then she let me know. It really took my breath away: you never start out coaching to get into the Hall of Fame or for money. Geno Auriemma and Tara VanDerveer are 2 of the best and I think that they would agree. We had a passion for coaching and being around young people and competition. I took the job at Shelbyville and was making $8000/year, which does not take a family far, but I just went out every day and coached. It is 1 of the most amazing awards that I have ever received.
You are the only coach in NCAA history to produce 3 consecutive NCAA scoring champions: what sort of offensive philosophy do you have? I had great players in Amber Holt/Alysha Clark and we got them the ball. Alysha had 4 other teammates who each scored 1000+ PTS so it was not like she was taking every single shot. I think Chrissy Givens was 2nd or 3rd in the nation the year before Amber. When I got the job at Middle Tennessee 16 years ago I was given a piece of advice by some college coaches that I could not bring my high school philosophy to the collegiate level. My wife stepped in and said I needed to do what I did best, so I took my same strategies that I used in high school.
You lost 3 of 4 games by double-digits heading into early-March: how have you been able to turn things around over the past 10 days? A lot of people do not understand this but we had to cancel a lot of non-conference games earlier this year, then went into quarantine for 26 days, came out of it…and missed 22 FTs in a 6-PT loss to Belmont! We later had 7 straight games on the road and then missed 1 week due to COVID and 1 week due to weather. We finally got healthy during the conference tourney and pulled together by winning some tough games. My assistants and I started working on our player’s minds and we felt that we were better than Rice, even though 1 of our best players (Alexis Whittington) went out and shot 1-13.
You only have 1 senior on the roster this year: were you surprised at your team’s success this year because you thought they were 1 year away from doing something special? No: I actually thought last year was going to be 1 of our better teams going into the NCAA tourney before it was cancelled. Early this year we felt that we would have a pretty good team and the young kids stepped it up.
This year Anastasia Hayes was named C-USA POY: what makes her such a great player? She is just gifted with a skill set that very few kids have. I have been coaching for 46 years and it amazes me when some young coaches talk about building a player’s skill set. I find it amusing because it is the good Lord who gave her the skill set she has. All you do is give them a platform to play on and try to allow them to play against the best competition in America. Her parents hauled her all over the country at an early age and she played against great competition. She was a WBCA All-American who signed with Tennessee during 1 of their best recruiting classes ever. She came back to Murfreesboro and knew my son Matt: she came to see what we had here and ended up signing with us. I think that she and her parents are very happy: the grass is not always greener on the other side. She could easily be the leading scorer in the nation but sacrificed that to deliver the ball to her teammates, which has led to our success this month.
In the C-USA conference title game last Saturday you had a 3-PT win over Rice: what did it mean to you to win a title, and what was the feeling like in your locker room afterward? You never know when that last title will come, and the last 2-3 years we have been knocking on the door. We blew a 15-PT lead to Rice a couple of years ago and then they canceled the tourney last year. It was very special to win 1 with my son on my staff: we are fortunate to have him and hope we can keep him. I have a bunch of rings but now all of my players do as well.
What do you think about being a #14 seed? I do not get into that and never have. We have been a 5 before and a 12 before. We are 17-7 and lost a few games so you never know about the Committee but I have never complained about what seed we got. I think that we are a dangerous team and if we play like we are capable of playing and take care of the ball then we got a shot to win a game or 2. This team does not care about size/records/tradition: we won more game on the road this year than at home.