Forged by grace, Ford earns her moment
WBB: The sophomore has developed into one of the Missouri Valley's best guards
Moments, especially in a sporting context, can be a fickle thing. You never know when a moment is going to happen, or if it’s even going to be a good thing. The one undeniable truth about the best moments is they can be looked back upon as the flashpoint that helped define an athlete’s greatness.
Let’s rewind to last Saturday. Northern Iowa’s Maya McDermott had just scored to cap her 35-point day, giving UNI a 91-89 lead over Murray State with 1:30 remaining in a game with massive postseason implications. That’s when Racer guard Haven Ford had her moment.
Before she took that fateful shot against UNI, Ford was 19-for-58 (32.7%) from beyond the arc since the calendar flipped to 2025, which was a significant drop from the 42.3% she made in November and December. If there’s one founding principle of Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner’s ‘system’, it’s simply this:
Just. Keep. Playing.
From her early months at Murray State in the summer of 2023 that were filled with struggles and self-doubt, to then giving herself grace while she got acclimated to the college game, to finally growing into one of the best players in the Missouri Valley Conference, Ford just kept playing through it all, and ultimately delivered one of the biggest shots of the season, and of her young career, for the Racers.
“I think it just stems from the beginning of the season,” Ford said. “I know we've talked about just how much the game has slowed down, and as it’s slowed down, I've gotten more comfortable with making those decisions. I'm not second-guessing myself. This year, I feel like I've been put in more positions to where I just have to step up and be confident in those moments. I know I got the rebound (against UNI) and pulled it back out, and didn't really know what we were going to go into at the time. As we were going into the play, I just saw the opportunity to create the space and just shot it with confidence like my other shots. Whether it went in or not, I feel like that was a shot I could hit. When you have that confidence, you’ve just got to let it fly.”
“I think that is a process of the system because there's no time to pout about it,” Turner said about Ford’s recent struggles. “There's no time to be thinking about it because we're hoping within the next 20 to 25 seconds, at most, after a defensive stop, for somebody to be ready to take the next shot and it could be them. I think it is something that comes with playing in (the system) more often, and I think the reason Haven is more comfortable in it is because she already went through the year of trying to get used to it. Our veteran players are more adept at having that mindset where sometimes our freshman might not be able to pass the moment as quickly. We’re working on that, and our kids are really doing a good job of that. It's just about finishing, playing with that perfect effort, and making sure that we never get too high, never get too low. You just have to stay in the moment.”
“It's taken me a minute to get going these last few games, but it's, again, just trusting the process — not dwelling on how the first half went or whether I started out 0-for-4. It’s just, ‘Can you step up and make the shot when it matters?’ You’ve just got to always be ready and that's kind of where our system helps with that. It’s so fast and you have a chance to make a new play every trip down the floor, so that's kind of our mindset.”
There isn’t a college basketball player walking the earth that doesn’t believe they can step up and make a big shot in a high-leverage spot in a game. There is also a fine line between confidence and delusion. Confidence is something that is earned, not only by the player themself, but the player needs to earn the confidence of their teammates and coaches. With the game on the line and the ball in her hand, and 20 months of hard work in the rearview mirror, Ford had earned the confidence of everyone in the Murray State program to have her moment.
“I think it just goes back to all the deposits that she's put in,” Turner said. “Nobody works harder. She's in the gym all the time. She's shooting all the time, doing extra workouts all the time. Every morning that I get there after dropping my son off at school, her and Kate (Young) are already in the gym getting that extra work in. When you put that type of work in, and you put that type of effort in, then it builds that confidence. Obviously, we try, as a coaching staff, just to pump confidence into them at all times to make them understand this is what it's about — stepping up when it matters the most. She stepped right into that shot. She loaded and she locked and had no doubt that it was going in. Being willing to say, ‘Listen, if I miss it, it's on me and I'm willing to take that, but I believe I'm going to make that shot.’ A lot of people aren't willing to put themselves in that position to take those shots.”
In the last two seasons, this Racer team has won 37 games — but only five of those wins have been decided by six points or fewer. Last week’s win against Northern Iowa was the first time where the Racers were able to come from behind in the final two minutes to grab a victory. As this program and team and system continue to mature, finding a new way to win a game was a giant step for the Racers.
“It's huge,” Ford said, delivering the understatement of the week. “We knew that the two games before that, it's felt shaky. We hadn't been able to hit the shots early and we've kind of played from behind. Even with us having a better start with (the UNI) game and still just going back-and-forth, we knew it was going to be a hard-fought game. That just shows how resilient we are — not backing down from when it got hard, because we easily could've just pressed on the brake and been like, ‘Well, here it goes again.’ We really just stuck together, not letting it get too big and just went with what got us there and what we were doing great up to that point.”
“You're never out of it,” Turner said, referring to one of the strengths of her up-tempo system. “That's something that we've tried to preach, but to be able to come from behind and be able to make the shots that they made, and to be able to get the stops that we were able to get in that last 90 seconds, does nothing but build confidence and confidence in each other. I think that's as important as anything is that they believe in each other. They know that if they just keep playing and we just keep working and doing the things that we can control, the outcome, more times than not, is going to be a positive outcome.”
The Racers will host Belmont Sunday afternoon at the CFSB Center at 2:00pm.