MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Hopes for a Big 12 regular season championship dimmed for the WVU women’s basketball team with Sunday’s 59-50 loss at TCU. Entering Wednesday’s play, the Mountaineers (11-4 Big 12) trail by TCU and Baylor by a half game with three games left to play. West Virginia will host Oklahoma State (21-7, 10-5 Big 12) Saturday.
WVU no longer controls their own destiny for the league title, a position they enjoyed until Sunday’s loss in Fort Worth.
“We’re still in a decent spot, I guess. We don’t control it and that’s the disappointing part. You want to control it if you can. Unfortunately, we don’t do that at this point. We need a little help for a Big 12 title. But there’s still plenty on the line from seedings to double byes to NCAA Tournament implications,” said WVU head coach Mark Kellogg.
“We’ll keep moving forward. We’re still in a good place. We’ve worked really hard to put ourselves in this position. We have a really good Oklahoma State team coming up. We’ve got to put a lot of focus into that one.”
“It shows how much we have to work for. Obviously we wanted to win that game. But it just shows how important the next three games are. I feel like taking all that excitement to motivation, because we need to win the next three games, that what I am carrying over from the TCU game. It was an exciting atmosphere with a ton of fans and really lively. We just need to carry that on,” said WVU junior forward Riley Makalusky.
A ‘bye week’ comes at a good time for the Mountaineers. Travel troubles due to weather Sunday evening forced the team to spend the night in Charleston, W.Va. before eventually returning to Morgantown on Monday afternoon. The Mountaineers have five days in between games before facing the Cowgirls.
“We had to land in Charleston and basically spend the night. So we landed at about 3:30, I think,” Kellogg said. “We found hotel rooms but couldn’t get transportation. That was kind of a pain. The fog warning was still through the next morning at 11. And then the pilots were going to timeout. We couldn’t get back via plane so we just ended up coming back on a bus.”
Oklahoma State comes to Morgantown on Saturday sporting the top scoring offense in the Big 12. OSU averages 83.4 points per game. The Cowgirls have scored at least 73 points in eight of their 15 conference games.
“This is, I think, the best offensive group from an efficiency standpoint it looks like that is in our league,” Kellogg said. “They are phenomenal in transition. They can space you. They’ll play small too at some times. They can almost play five guards and make you defend all over the perimeter. They do shoot the three and they can make quite a few of them. But they can get to the rim and score different ways. They are elite in transition and they are elite in their shot making.”
Despite Sunday’s loss at TCU, West Virginia remains in the mix for a top four seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Mountaineers are No. 19 in this week’s AP poll and they check in at No. 22 in the official NCAA NET ratings. WVU is 9-6 in NCAA Quad 1 and Quad 2 games with a victory over No. 10 Duke and a two-point loss to No. 17 Ohio State.
“I think it just shows how good we are,” Makalusky said. “We were in close games with both of those teams. I feel like it just shows our potential. I think it was really important to play those games just to prepare us for March. I hope we can continue that with the teams we play.”
“Strength of schedule is up there and it is in a pretty good spot right now,” Kellogg said. “The computers, I think, like us and we have some production there. We’re close with a couple of other opponents too. If they’ll win a couple games, it may change with a Quad win, or loss for that matter.”
With three more games remaining for the Mountaineers prior to the start of the Big 12 Conference tournament, Kellogg’s unofficial team ‘bracketologist’ is his son and Morgantown High School senior guard, Cam.
“It is the timeliness of the report that is pretty good. He knows exactly to the minute. He does the same thing with the AP poll. It is probably 12 o’clock and one second and he is probably clicking it to see where we are at with bracketologies and we have the availability reports now. He has figured out how to get that one. It may not even be our game but he just likes to let us know. He’s all in. He wants to be a coach. He loves it. He is invested in it. We’ll let him keep rolling with it,” Kellogg said.
“I have had to tame him down on some of his yelling at the officials a little bit because he gets going there too. He is so invested and that’s what you love about him, his passion. So we’ll let him keep rolling.”