CORALVILLE, Iowa – Evansville continues to bust brackets and Murray State continues to break records at the 2026 Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Tournament.
After their third straight win in the tournament over three straight days — and just their third tournament win since 2017 — Evansville is the first 10th seed in MVC Tournament history to reach the title game.
A ninth seed did win the tournament title in 2009 — and, yes, it was Evansville with a team that won just four regular-season conference games.
This season’s Purple Aces squad entered the tournament with a 5-15 conference and 10-24 overall record. With their 75-70 overtime win Saturday over No. 3 Illinois State, they now have a date in Sunday’s final game with top-seeded and reigning champion Murray State, who defeated Northern Iowa 72-59 in Saturday’s other semi-final.
Murray State’s only conference loss in the regular season was to Northern Iowa, 89-74, on Jan. 23. On the flip side, two of Evansville’s five conference wins were over UNI. So, buckle up — the championship game should be pure cinema.
“Our team just needs to keep playing like winners. We’ve come out here fearless. We haven’t been afraid of the stage. Nobody’s been tight,” Evansville head coach Robyn Scherr told reporters after Saturday’s game. “I think the same kind of mentality is just the pressure’s not on us. We get to come out here, play loose, play with the confidence that we’ve gained over these last few games. We’re excited to take on the number one seed. So it’ll be a good game.”
Camryn Runner again led Evansville with 24 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists. The sophomore guard explains how the team has kept its composure throughout the tournament, despite being a heavy underdog.
“The mindset of nothing to lose, like we genuinely have nothing to lose. People have overlooked us. You can look at our record and you’re like, okay, like the top seed’s gonna win, right? People overlook us, and we genuinely have nothing to lose. That’s been our motto coming in here,” Runner told reporters after the game. “We believed in each other. We put in the work, and here we are. We took down the seventh-seed UIC. We took down Belmont, the second seed, right? And then we just took down Illinois State, the third seed. Like those are three games back-to–back that were tough, right? That was just an overtime game. All of them have been close. But it’s our belief in each other and then going out there and playing.”
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
While Scherr has always believed in her team’s potential, she wasn’t so sure what to expect after losing the last four games of the regular season.
“From my perspective coming into the tournament, we didn’t have a great last week of our regular season, and I think we dealt with a lot of honesty all season with each other. We’ve had tough talks when they needed to be had,” she said. “I was really worried that was it for us for the season. We’ve given it everything we had, and we hit the wall in the last week, and we were done, and we had a heart-to-heart about it.”
“I shared with our team that I was really worried that we were going to come here and get blasted, that we just weren’t ready, that we were just kind of done, that we had hit the wall. How did we want to come here and play? And I really challenged them as a group of players to decide what their goals were for this tournament, and how they were going to approach it. And then, not only that, how were they going to execute it, and how were they going to hold each other accountable to it.”
“So, here we are,” she added. “That’s them. That’s these guys. They decided to come here and play this way. But I will continue to say I’ve always known we can play like this, and I’m glad to see our team maturing at the right time.”
Murray State continues to roll and break records
After breaking several scoring records Friday, Murray State wreaked more havoc in the books Saturday.
The semifinals win over UNI brings the Racers into pretty elite MVC company. With an overall record of 30-3, Murray State is just the second MVC team to reach 30 wins in a season. The other was Missouri State’s 1992 Final Four team, which finished 31-3.
Saturday’s game was closer than the final score shows as UNI pulled from 18 points behind to take the lead in the third quarter. Murray State head coach Rechelle Turner praised her team’s resilience and composure to hold the Panthers to just six points in the fourth quarter and run away with the win.
“They just believe in each other. They have so much belief in each other,” she told reporters after the game. “I mean, I get mad a lot, and I get upset and I get angry, but they’re always like, ‘coach, we got it, we got this.’ And then they calm each other down, and they calm me down, and they just continue to push each other.”
With 13 rebounds Saturday, junior forward Sharnecce Currie-Jelks broke the single season Murray State rebounding record with 385, previously held by Jackie Mounts (1978-79) with 375.
She also notched her 25th double-double this season — 10 points and 13 rebounds — which currently leads the nation.
MVC Player of the Year Halli Poock became the single-season Murray State scoring leader with 725 with her 10 points Saturday, eclipsing Ashley Hayes who had 723 in 2008-09.
The sophomore guard who grew up in Waterloo, Iowa — adjacent to Cedar Falls and UNI — was sitting in the press room during the press conference waiting to talk to local reporters. She asked Turner how it feels to be the coach of the year going to a back-to-back championship.
“I’m not real sure that’s legal,” Turner responded to her star player-turned-reporter. “Well, the reason I’m coaching here is because of the players on my team, the coaches on my staff, the support staff, the administration that has backed this program and has made these young women feel believed in and feel warranted of great things. I mean, the Coach of the Year award is not about one person, it is about all the people that surround me. You’re only as good as the people around me and I have the best.”
Turner knows she faces a formidable opponent in Evansville for the championship and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. And despite sweeping the Purple Aces in the regular season, she is taking nothing for granted.
“Just stay the course. Trust the process. Our whole pregame speech was about how March doesn’t care. March doesn’t care what your record is. March doesn’t care if you have the best team or the best players. If you’re a ranked team, it doesn’t care. It’s all about the madness, and it’s about the toughest and most connected teams that are going to win the game,” she said.
The MVC championship game begins at 1 p.m. CT Sunday and can be watched on ESPN+.
Order ‘Rare Gems’ and save 30%
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX Basketball and The IX Sports, wrote this deeply reported book. “Rare Gems” follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.
If you enjoy Megdal’s coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX Sports, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout to save 30%!
