Lady Raider’s Head Coach, Rick Insell
“Its going to be a little different this year, our schedule is pretty tough. We open up and go to Virginia, we come back and play Louisville, they’re pre-season ranked number two. We then have Georgia Tech coming in and Arizona State. I believe they’re ranked top 10 in the country. We’ll also get Central Michigan, Ohio and Tulane, so we have a pretty good home schedule this year. As far as road games, we have to go to Kentucky and Missouri State. We then have Austin Peay coming in here, then we’ll travel to Tennessee Tech. Our non-conference schedule is probably as tough as I’ve had since I’ve been at Middle Tennessee State. We’ll see, with the team we’ve got we’re pretty much top loaded with experience. We’ve got one or two positions where we’re looking to work some of our younger players in. We have seven young ladies that are kind of inexperienced. [This season] we have three sophomores and four freshmen, that are very talented, but they’ve got to get out of high school mode. We have to get them into the division one mode and that’s tough sometimes. Sometimes its takes a couple of years to do that. We’re frustrated a little bit as a coaching staff, because we want it right now. [The players] are frustrated because they want it right now too. In this type of setting nothing takes the place of experience.”
Men’s Basketball Head Coach, Kermit Davis
“We had our first blue/white scrimmage last Saturday. It’s usually one of the worst days in any head coaches life. We had a lot of room to work on, but we got through it healthy. Now we’ve got a couple of weeks before we open up. We’ll have a private scrimmage this Saturday and then play an exhibition game on the third. I’ve been pleased with our guys, we’ve got work to do. Right now, knock on wood, we are healthy as a team and that’s a good sign. We have some new guys making progress. We’ve got a big week this week, it’s a fun week for our players. There’s our tip-off celebration luncheon on Thursday at Embassy Suites, Auto Art has sponsored our luncheon. Along with the help of TDK and right now we’re about two or three seats away from selling out around 700 people. Dick Vitale will be at the luncheon and then he’ll be with us the whole day. That night we’ll have Murphy Madness with Rick’s team and the men’s team and that will be another great evening. Our athletic department has done such a good job or promoting [Murphy Madness] We’re all excited about college football, but its getting closer and closer to our season.”
The Lady Raiders will host two exhibition games before the season gets under way. The first, against Coastal Georgia on October 30th at 2 p.m. The second, against Truett McConnell on November 3rd at 5 p.m. Season play begins November 11th against Virginia at Charolettesville, VA.
The Men’s team will play an exhibition game verse North Alabama November 3rd at 7:30 p.m. The men’s team will begin season play November 11th as they host Milligan College at 11 a.m.
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