West Virginia women’s basketball concluded their regular season with a win over TCU on Saturday.
Now, the Mountaineers have a couple question marks after injuries to two key players this past weekend, as head coach Mark Kellogg’s group prepares for the postseason.
“It’s been really a fun year just to see the momentum and the growth and maybe the direction of where we’re going. And we’re not there yet, but certainly excited about where we can go.” Kellogg said.
With a win over the Horned Frogs, the Mountaineers earned the No. 6 seed in the Big 12 Tournament. West Virginia will play on Friday night against the winner of No. 14 UCF vs. No. 11 Cincinnati.
“We’ve been in every single game and had opportunities to win, so I think we can go in with a lot of confidence knowing we can play with and beat most teams in this league,” Kellogg said.
Having already played and won against Cincinnati and UCF in their regular season, Kellogg reassured that his team would “prepare for both, somewhat similar teams.”
Although West Virginia has struggled in recent games, their performance on Saturday displayed their toughness on defense, forcing 27 turnovers and 16 steals.
“We were as dialed in against TCU defensively as I have seen us in a long time, that effort on the defensive end was tremendous,” Kellogg said.
During the victory Saturday, both JJ Quinerly and Danelle Arigbabu were injured and left the game.
“We are taking it day-by-day would be the best case. It probably looks a little better now than it did after the game and she’s responded here well after the last 24 hours,” Kellogg said of Quinerly.
As for Arigbabu, Kellogg said it’s likely a concussion.
“I think it is gonna be a concussion, it sounds like, so she’s in that protocol and going through it, but I think she has responded pretty well too,” Kellogg said.
One of the struggles down the stretch of the season for the Mountaineers was their play on offense. WVU didn’t score more than 65 points in a game in their last four contests, which ended up being four of their eight lowest scoring games this season.
“Offensively, I’ve said this all year, it would take us a little while and we are still quite not where I would like to be, but that is still a work in progress,” Kellogg said.
West Virginia begins their Big 12 Tournament journey on Friday at 9:00 p.m. against the winner of Cincinnati vs UCF.
Photo by Aaron Parker, Blue Gold Sports
