MURRAY, KY — For Murray State women’s basketball, depth could be more than just having extra players available.<\/p>\n
It could change the way the Racers play.<\/p>\n
Head coach Rechelle Turner has been trying to build a roster deep enough to sustain an up-tempo style on both ends of the floor. This season, she believes Murray State has finally reached that point.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think depth is something that we’re going to have this year, something we’ve been trying to get to for several years so we can play an up-tempo style defensively, not only offensively,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
The Racers added several pieces through the transfer portal, including Claire Johnson and Sydney Huber, while also bringing in a freshman class Turner believes can contribute.<\/p>\n
Both transfers arrive with experience that could be valuable alongside Murray State’s returning core.<\/p>\n
Johnson played her freshman season at Samford before spending last season at Nebraska, giving her experience in both the Southern Conference and Big Ten.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we did a great job in the portal bringing in players that have made significant impacts in places they were before,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
Huber brings familiarity with the Missouri Valley Conference after earning All-Freshman honors at Evansville last season. Johnson, meanwhile, spent a year going against Big Ten competition every day.<\/p>\n
Turner believes that experience can raise the level of an already talented roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving those two come in with experience is really going to help lift what we already have, talent-wise,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
For Johnson, the depth gives Murray State another option when the season gets difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have a lot of talent on the team, obviously returners and then newcomers,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI think it’s going to be really exciting to see just where that depth can take us, and how whenever one person has an off night, other people can step up.\u201d<\/p>\n
That could become especially important across a long conference schedule, when fatigue, foul trouble or injuries can force players into bigger roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we don’t see that, but if anybody were to get tired or face injuries one night, we know that other people are going to be excited and willing to step up,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
With back-to-back MVC championships already on the resume, Murray State isn’t simply looking to add more players to the rotation.<\/p>\n
The Racers are looking to use that depth to dictate how they play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MURRAY, KY — For Murray State women’s basketball, depth could be more than just having extra players available.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,707,724,4762,33366,85],"class_list":["post-912759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-msu","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}