BATON ROUGE, La. — After West Virginia’s Sweet 16 hopes were derailed by a 76-67 upset loss to LSU, the No. 2-seeded Mountaineers emerged shell-shocked.
“We planned on going a lot further than this,” said senior center Asya Bussie.
“I felt we gave one away,” said coach Mike Carey.
Sure, the NCAA women’s format isn’t one for fairness—not when the Big 12 regular-season co-champs are forced to play on a lower-seeded team’s home floor in the second round. But that didn’t prevent DePaul from winning at Duke, or Oklahoma State from upsetting Purdue, or Louisville from cruising at Iowa.
“Regardless of where we played,” Bussie said, “we had to execute and defend down the stretch, and we didn’t do that.”
Click the video above to see highlights and hear postgame reaction from West Virginia coach Mike Carey, along with Bussie and Christal Caldwell.