FAIRMONT — Rachel Murray is no stranger to national tournaments.

Fairmont State’s 6-3 junior center from Gloucester, Mass. made two appearances in the National Junior College Athletic Association Tournament when she played for the Community College of Rhode Island and helped lead the Lady Knights to a 23-8 overall record in 2008-09 and an appearance in the NJCAA “Elight Eight.”

Nowadays Murray has similar plans with her new team FSU, but the stakes are a bit higher and the stage is much bigger.

Murray and the Lady Falcons will take part in the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional Tournament which tips off this Friday evening in Erie, Pa. at the Hammermill Center on the campus of Gannon University.

Fairmont State, which is 22-9 overall, enters the regional as the No. 8 seed and will tangle with top-seeded and unbeaten Gannon University (33-0) at 6 p.m. Friday night. The Lady Knights are the lone undefeated team in NCAA Division II and enter the national tournament ranked first in the nation for the third straight week.

Murray, who along with identical twin sister Jaclyn transferred to FSU this past fall, has played a major role in the Lady Falcons’ success this season. She was an honorable mention All-West Virginia Conference selection and this past week was one of three Fairmont State players named to the league’s All-Tournament team when she helped lead the Lady Falcons to their second conference tournament championship in the last three years.

Murray averages 9.6 points and 10.1 rebounds per game for FSU. She’s currently 18th in the nation in D-II in rebounding. Fairmont’s center has also blocked a single-season school record 97 shots this year. She averages 3.1 blocks per game which is fourth in the country. Her 97 blocked shots also currently has her sixth in school history in career blocked shots.

In last week’s WVC Tournament, Murray averaged 12.0 points and 15.3 rebounds in four games for FSU. She turned in her best overall game of the season in Fairmont’s biggest game of the year when she scored 23 points and pulled down 21 rebounds in the Lady Falcons’ thrilling 85-78 overtime victory over West Liberty in the tournament’s championship game.

“It was an amazing feeling for me and for all of us to accomplish what we did last week winning the league tournament and earning a berth in the national tournament,” said Murray. “It’s awesome. I just want to keep improving and stay focused so I can help our team have continued success.

“We know we have a big challenge ahead of us, but this is the opportunity you play for all season and we just want to try to make the most of it.”

Murray’s role for FSU quickly changed shortly into her first season with the team. She earned the starting spot at center, but was only expected to play about 25 minutes per outing, while her twin sister Jaclyn was being counted upon to play the remaining 15 minutes at the center spot.

Jaclyn, however, suffered a season-ending knee injury in the fourth game of the year leaving Fairmont without a true backup in the post. Thus, Murray has averaged over 30 minutes per game for Fairmont State this season and in the Lady Falcons’ recent stretch run she's rarely left the floor for any extended period of time.

“I knew when that happened I really had to step up big for us,” said Murray. “I was pretty much the only legitimate true post we had on the team. Mo (Gattuso) did a great job of filling in for me early, but when Lauren (Gilbert) went down for a while with her knee injury Mo had to move over to the forward spot and become a starter for us.

“At that point I knew mentally and physically I had to prepare myself to play more. After practice I’d go to the treadmill to run just to make sure my endurance could last during the games because I knew I’d be playing more minutes. To be honest I actually feel pretty good. I’m not going to lie there are times when I get a little tired, but I just try to reach back and keep playing hard and when the game is over I’ve never really felt that bad.”

At Fairmont, Murray has been challenged to become much more of a complete player on both ends of the floor. On offense not only is she asked to rebound all of the time and score on occasions, she also constantly has to set screens at the high post for her guards. That’s been a new role for her, but one she has come to enjoy.

“That’s definitely been a new role for me and one I’ve had to learn to adjust to all season, but it’s worked really well for us and to be quite honest I enjoy it,” she said. “It’s gotten us this far. I like the pick-and-roll game.”

Friday Murray and her FSU teammates will face, without question, their biggest challenge of the year. Gannon is one win away from tying a Division II record for consecutive victories in a single season. The Lady Knights also have a whopping 21.0 average margin of victory in games this season.

“We’ve got a special bond on this team where we’ve become very close and it's allowed us to have a lot of success,” said Murray. “We know Friday we’re going to face our biggest challenge of the year. We’re just going to try to be mentally prepared and play as well as we can play.”