Coming off a bye week after making NCAA history by shutting out their opponents in the first quarter in back-to-back games, No. 24 West Virginia women’s basketball coach Mark Kellogg shared his thoughts on playing Iowa State, whom the Mountaineers lost to by a score of 74-64 on Jan. 10.
“We lost the last time up there but played fairly well for 30-plus minutes. At least led for 30-plus minutes but ultimately didn’t win,” Kellogg said on Friday.
“And so we’ve got to be ready to make some adjustments, figure out how we can play a little bit better, but at the same time anticipate what they might do a little bit different.”
The Cyclones’ leading scorer is 6-foot-3 freshman Audi Crooks who averages 17 points per game, shooting 58.4% from the field.
“They’re good the Audi Crooks kid is really good. It’s a big kid that’s dominant on the low block, I mean she’s not you know just doing it against us,” Kellogg said of Crooks.
“They’re going to try to get her the ball. That’s I don’t think that’s [a secret], we know that they know that. We’ve got to come up with a scheme to try to limit her you know as much as we, but she had a good night at Kansas too (25 points and eight rebounds.”
West Virginia guard Jordan Harrison leads the Mountaineers in assists per game with 5.7 and was a player who followed Kellogg to WVU from Stephen F. Austin, after he heavily recruited her coming out of high school.
“She’s the organizer, the calming influence for us the extension of the head coach as we all like to say,” Kellogg said of Harrison.
“She’s a hard worker. She’s earned the right to have this right now the kid works her tail off and is just a phenomenal kid and a good leader”
The sophomore is also averaging 14.3 points and 2.7 steals per game, shooting 50% from the field.
As a freshman at SFA, she finished with 411 points, 169 assists and 127 rebounds.
With Iowa State coming to the WVU Coliseum on Saturday, Kellogg spoke of the importance of fan support.
“I want our kids to the get to experience the same thing on their home floor (compared to the Cyclones’ fan support at Hilton Coliseum). We have been good and the crowd was good you know and they’re getting better,” Kellogg said.
“I anticipate that they will continue to grow but I want them to grow exponentially if we can. If we can do that and really just build something special here that this state and this region can be really proud of. And I think we’re well on our way and maybe a little ahead of the schedule ahead of the curve um but it doesn’t mean we should take any longer to to do it right. Let’s keep building it, yeah why not now why not us?”
