We give a classical algorithm for linear regression analogous to the quantum matrix inversion algorithm [Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd, Physical Review Letters'09, arXiv:0811.3171] for low-rank matrices [Wossnig, Zhao, and Prakash, Physical Review Letters'18, arXiv:1704.06174], when the input matrix $A$ is stored in a data structure applicable for QRAM-based state preparation. Namely, suppose we are given an $A \in \mathbb{C}^{m\times n}$ with minimum non-zero singular value $σ$ which supports certain efficient $\ell_2$-norm importance sampling queries, along with a $b \in \mathbb{C}^m$. Then, for some $x \in \mathbb{C}^n$ satisfying $\|x - A^+b\| \leq \varepsilon\|A^+b\|$, we can output a measurement of $|x\rangle$ in the computational basis and output an entry of $x$ with classical algorithms that run in $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}\big(\frac{\|A\|_{\mathrm{F}}^6\|A\|^6}{σ^{12}\varepsilon^4}\big)$ and $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}\big(\frac{\|A\|_{\mathrm{F}}^6\|A\|^2}{σ^8\varepsilon^4}\big)$ time, respectively. This improves on previous "quantum-inspired" algorithms in this line of research by at least a factor of $\frac{\|A\|^{16}}{σ^{16}\varepsilon^2}$ [Chia, Gilyén, Li, Lin, Tang, and Wang, STOC'20, arXiv:1910.06151]. As a consequence, we show that quantum computers can achieve at most a factor-of-12 speedup for linear regression in this QRAM data structure setting and related settings. Our work applies techniques from sketching algorithms and optimization to the quantum-inspired literature. Unlike earlier works, this is a promising avenue that could lead to feasible implementations of classical regression in a quantum-inspired settings, for comparison against future quantum computers.