It was a great present West Virginia women’s basketball opened over the holiday break, earning their first ranking of the season as they finished non-conference play with an undefeated 11-0 record.
“It’s definitely been a great start. Could it have been better, yeah probably, in certain areas, we maybe could’ve done a few things better and played better in certain stretches but I think we’re getting better from it,” West Virginia head coach Mark Kellogg said. “But from a big picture sense, it’s a pretty cool semester.”
Upon returning from the holiday break, Kellogg went over the team’s goals they set prior to the beginning of the season. Ones they accomplished including beating both Pitt and Penn State, as well as winning all of their non-conference games.
“To be completely honest, top-25 was not one of the non-conference goals. It wasn’t about that, it was about let’s just continue to get better, and learn our identity and figure out who are teammates are and those were actually some of their written goals they were able to check,” Kellogg said. “They wanted to go undefeated, that was one of the goals. They wanted to sweep Pitt and Penn State, that was really important to them. So they got those two goals checked as well.”
West Virginia returns to the court and is tasked with competing in the Big 12. The Big 12 has had a strong start to the season, featuring four of the 10 remaining undefeated teams in the country.
One area WVU has struggled with is with rebounding. The Mountianeers are 12th in the Big 12 in rebounds per game, and rank 11th in rebounding margin.
“We’ve been okay rebounding, better than average. Still, I don’t think we’re a great rebounding team by any stretch. We’re going to get challenged more in the Big 12, so I think we’re going to learn a little bit more about us from the rebounding standpoint pretty soon,” Kellogg said.
Kellogg also hopes the Mountaineers can be more efficient on the offensive end moving forward.
We’ve still only played 11 games together. Obviously we get to practice and we get to work on a few things, but when other teams play you differently, we’ve got to be able to react to what they do. What we’re trying to do is come up with that might be so we can stay ahead of that curve just a little bit,” Kellogg said of his offense. “It’s not where we want it to be but certainly better than where it’s been.”
West Virginia opens Big 12 play on the road against Kansas on Saturday. Kansas is 7-4 on the season, but has played some top competition including No. 14 Virginia Tech and No. 15 UConn. They lost both those games by an average of 4.5 points, including a one-point loss to Virginia Tech.
There is a common opponent between WVU and Kansas in Penn State. WVU beat Penn State 83-65, while Kansas fell, 91-85.
“You’re always worried about the first quarter of the first game back after a break like that but otherwise feel like we’re in a good place,” Kellogg said.
Tip-off from Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas, is set for 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. The game will be televised on ESPN+.
