Light On Her Feet - Karsen Murphy Made A Leap Of Faith And Landed With The Mocs

When most basketball players fall, a once-coordinated athlete loses all ability to control their limbs and they crash to the floor like a rock hitting still pond water. Gravity wins out over reflexes and the result is often the painful scene of a body slamming into the hardwood and sliding a few inches or feet afterward. This is especially true of taller players, whose momentum is as unstoppable going to the rim as it is when they hit the floor after a hard foul.

 

At 6-0, Karsen Murphy is usually one of the taller of the ten participants in any given Chattanooga Mocs women’s basketball game.

And like any true hooper, she has taken her fair share of tumbles over the course of her career.

 

But it takes only a cursory glance at the onetime Montana Lady Griz to know Murphy glides, pivots, and cuts, and jumps with a rare kind of effortless grace. A grace honed from hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice in an entirely different realm from basketball.

 

“I danced from the time I was two years old to 18, and it was just footwork, athleticism, and moving your body in different ways,” Murphy says, laughing. “And if you notice when I fall, it’s a very graceful fall. Dance is in me everywhere, and I miss it so much.”

 

Growing up in the small eastern Montana town of Glendive, Murphy spent much of her time training as a ballet dancer under the watchful eye of her grandmother. When she wasn’t dancing, Murphy starred in a number of athletic pursuits.

 

The future Division I forward was a superstar for Dawson County High School’s basketball team, but she was also an all-conference fixture on the volleyball team and a record setter in track and field. In the 2019 state championships, she set the Class A record for the triple jump at 37’ 11.5 and won the high jump competition on top of that.

 

“She broke the state record in the triple jump her junior year, and there’s a good chance she would’ve broken the high jump record her senior year (if the season had not been cancelled due to COVID-19 in 2020),” her former track and field coach Jim Temple says. “She doesn’t like to lose but she’s a sweetheart at the same time.”

 

An athlete of Murphy’s caliber might have been able to coast to a moderate level of success based off her physical tools alone. But as her old coach alluded, Murphy is a dogged competitor and a relentless worker who does not know the meaning of “good enough.”

 

Her current college coach Katie Burrows still calls Murphy a “perfectionist,” but Murphy says she has learned how to pace herself in a way her high school self never would. With basketball and weight-training now the sole focus of her athletic worldview, Murphy has gradually learned to take her time to slow down.

 

“If I wake up and I’m not doing anything, I feel like I’m doing something wrong, and I have to do something. I can’t just sit and rest,” Murphy says. “In high school, there were no days off. Even on Sundays, I danced for five hours a day. I constantly needed to be working or doing something.”

 

As hardworking and driven as Murphy was as a freshman at the University of Montana, there was nothing she could do to avoid the coaching turnover that occurred in her brief stint at the state’s flagship university.

 

The coach who recruited her, Shannon Schweyen, left before the beginning of the 2020-21 season (Murphy’s first freshman season). Mike Petrino then spent one season at the top before Brian Holsinger was hired to guide the team. Once Holsinger got the job, several players, including Murphy, were told they no longer had a future with the program.

 

“I ended up in the transfer portal, and for about a week I was just looking at different schools,” Murphy says. “I had about 25 schools reach out to me, ranging from NAIA to Division I, so I had a lot of options. Chattanooga came along and there was just something about it that pulled me here.”

 

The person doing most of the pulling was Katie Burrows, who happened by chance to see Murphy’s name and position in the sea of transfer portal-ers. Burrows searched through the internet to find film of the forward in college and in high school, liked what she saw, and reached out.

 

“It was a pretty quick process with her,” Burrows says. “We hit it off really quick, and we got on a Zoom call with her and her parents. About ten minutes after we Zoomed, she called back and said ‘I don’t know what I’m doing [by waiting], I’m ready to commit!’”

 

In Murphy’s retelling of the events, she says the two-hour video-call meeting was “everything I wanted” and says she was sold on Burrows’ descriptions of Chattanooga’s culture, Southern hospitality, and the program.

 

“Then we went to dinner, and I was like ‘I don’t know dad, it just felt right, it just felt right,’” Murphy says. “And so he was like “Then commit!” I have a very strong faith, so I prayed to God for an hour to figure out if it was best for me, and He really told me this was my next step and where I needed to be.”

 

And so having never been south of the Mason Dixon line before, Murphy and her family drove 20 hours through the Midwest to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. About half a year into her Chattanooga experience, Murphy has developed a fondness for the town’s culture and outdoor scene (although she loathes the summer humidity). That doesn’t stop her from missing home and her many siblings though.

 

“At some point in my life, I wanted to leave Montana, but I do miss the community,” Murphy says. “When you go to Glendive, you know everyone, and everyone knows you. It was so awesome. I have five siblings and I’m missing watching them grow up. But thank goodness for FaceTime, because I may be far from home, but I still feel close.”

 

Murphy has grown close to several of her teammates. Pare Pene is a fourth-year player who has taken the transfer and first-year freshman Addie Grace Porter under her wing (Porter calls Pene the “team mom”). Unlike Murphy, Porter grew up a couple hours away in Lebanon, Tennessee and has been familiar with the UTC program since her high school days. Such superficial differences didn’t stop the two from becoming friends though.”

 

“One time we were going home, and I was just shuffling through my playlist, and on one song she said ‘Oh I like this song!’ And it was like that song after song,” Porter says. “I was like ‘Wow Karsen, we both have the exact same music tastes.’ And you typically bond with the people in your class, and so with us both being new, me and Karsen have gotten close.” 

 

At her best on the court, Murphy looks like she is dancing to the songs she and her teammate enjoy on car rides across Tennessee’s roads. She has a high release on her pogo-stick jumpshot and seems to effortlessly flow from different spots on the court as she moves within Chattanooga’s matchup zone.

 

“I’m six feet and have some athleticism in me, so I feel like I’m in a position where I can play wherever coach puts me at,” Murphy says. “Obviously, post is a little difficult since I’m not as big, but I feel like I have a lot of versatility in me. If I need to post up a mismatch, I can do that. And if I need to go out and shoot a three, I can do that too.”

 

As the subject of this article alludes to, Murphy still needs to develop strength if she is to hang with the bulkier bruisers in the SoCon. Aside from improving her ability to hold her position in the post, Murphy’s coach wants her to “play off instinct” rather than trying to map out every move.

 

“We’re trying to get her more reps and to get her to just react,” Burrows says. “It’s because Karsen always wants to do the right things and she’s a perfectionist at heart. I’m trying to get her to not be that way because it’s impossible to be like that and be successful.”

 

Burrows has little doubt the workaholic from Montana will improve over the course of her next three years of eligibility. As she does this, it would shock no one if Murphy dramatically increased her current averages of 3.4 points and 2.3 rebounds per game in limited minutes. And if Murphy and the rest of the Mocs can jell as the season ends, she might be doing a different kind of dancing in March. 

 

“Overall, my goal is to win, and our team goal is to make the NCAA tournament,” Murphy says. “I know that going into every game, the goal is to win. Whenever coach puts me in, I’ll take the opportunity and am always out there to work hard and do what my teammates need.”

 

 

 

 

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