MT women 2024 CUSA champs
Courtesy of MT athletics

For the second season in a row and the 12th time in Rick Insell's tenure as head coach, the Middle Tennessee women's basketball program is going dancing. 

The Blue Raiders (29-4) punched their NCAA Tournament ticket on Saturday with a 67-51 win over Liberty in the Conference USA tournament championship in Huntsville, Ala.

The win capped off not only an impressive showing in the conference tournament — which included a 78-50 win over UTEP in the quarterfinals and a 62-56 victory over Louisiana Tech in the semifinals — but an unbeaten conference campaign. 

11-seed MTSU enters the Big Dance having won 19 straight games, all against CUSA opponents, and will now take on 6-seed Louisville out of the ACC on Friday at 12:30 p.m. in Baton Rouge, La. The two teams last met during the 2022-23 regular season, when the Blue Raiders dominated the Cardinals 67-49 in Murfreesboro.

MTSU has won its opening game in five of 21 March Madness appearances but hasn't advanced past the first round since 2007. To knock off Louisville (24-9), they will need high-level performances from CUSA Player of the Year Savannah Wheeler and Defensive Player of the Year Anastasiia Boldyreva. 

But the Blue Raiders are far from a top-heavy squad. Three other players, all Tennessee natives, earned second-team all-conference recognition: Courtney Whitson (Kingsport), Jalynn Gregory (Lafayette), and Ta'Mia Scott (Clarksville).

The Blue Raiders aren't the only local squad going dancing. In addition to Vanderbilt sneaking into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade, Belmont accepted an invite to the inaugural Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT). 

The Bruins (25-8) are un-seeded and will be taking on 4-seed Ball State (28-5) on Thursday at 5:30 in Muncie, Ind.

The 32-team bracket features the first four teams left out of the NCAA Tournament, plus any regular-season conference champions that did not make the NCAA field. The remainder of the spots are then filled by a selection committee. 

The first three rounds are played on the campuses of the higher seed in each matchup, while the final four and title game take place in Indianapolis. 

After making six out of the last seven NCAA Tournaments, the Bruins find themselves in the new WBIT after falling to Missouri State 63-48 in the Missouri Valley semifinals.