(Mark Kellogg press conference – October 11)
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — As Mark Kellogg continues to mix and match players throughout his roster during the lengthy preseason, the WVU women’s basketball team will arrive at a key evaluation point soon. The Mountaineers will have their first “closed scrimmage” this weekend.
“You do want to see what happens when the so-called lights come on. When they come on this weekend, who does play well? Who can thrive? We’ve tried to create some chaos in practice from time-to-time just to see who can function in the chaos and maybe who doesn’t function as well,” said Kellogg.
“I think we are getting a little bit of an idea. We really haven’t put a starting group, so to speak, together yet. That’s probably coming over the next couple days. It won’t be set in stone by any means. We do need to start looking at some lineups. I pretty much mix the teams every day so they don’t play with the same ones.”
NCAA basketball teams can hold a pair of scrimmages against other Division I schools in their preseason. In years past, WVU has had one closed scrimmage and another public exhibition game. Kellogg, as has been his practice recently, has opted for two closed scrimmages.
“I haven’t done many true exhibition games. It has been more scrimmages. For me, I can get, most of the time, more out of it. You can stay as long as you want. You can do possessions. You could do five quarters or six quarters. You could do special situations. You can really kind of get as deep as you want. Whereas in an exhibition, you are going to play your four quarters and you’re going to go home.”
Kellogg, the third head coach in three years at WVU, is mixing a roster of six returners and seven newcomers. Four starters — JJ Quinerly, Jayla Hemingway, Kyah Watson and Kylee Blacksten — are back from last year’s team that went 19-12 and qualified for the NCAA Tournament.
“They can play in our system. It is not one of these where we are just looking at it that we have a new coach and you have kids that are just polar opposite of what you would want. There are plenty of kids that were here, of those six, that can really fit what we do.
“They are picking up on a new system and this is new lingo and terminology. I just want them to be in the right head space, because that’s what I think allows us to get the best out of them. If they are excited to come into the facility every day and they feel good about themselves, I am a ‘Be you, align with us’ guy.”
While Kellogg has scrolled through the game film of his returning players from last season, his evaluations are more focused on what he has seen since arriving on campus in the spring.
“I probably at some point in my time here have watched every Big 12 game in some capacity. I didn’t go back into the non-conference much at all. But definitely that was through the conference schedule. That was really to get familiar with the league and our team, not necessarily our players. I get most of my information from the players, watching them every single day throughout the summer, the fall and now the preseason.”
Kellogg expects to play with an uptempo offense and full court pressure on defense.
“We’re still trying to play fast. We are putting in the system as I always would. It hasn’t been any different than any other stop. I have practice plans every year through the last 19 years. They’re not always the same every year but you follow a pretty good blueprint.”
Fifth-year guard Lauren Fields is one of the notable newcomers on the WVU roster. She played three seasons at Oklahoma State before transferring to Arizona for the 2022-2023 season. Two of Kellogg’s full-time assistants coached Fields over the last two seasons.
“Jessica Grayson coached her at Oklahoma State. And then Erin Grant was with her at Arizona, and [Director of Basketball Operations] Kayla Scott, who came here from Arizona. We had quite the connection with Lauren. She was an All-Big 12 kid at Oklahoma State. She has averaged 15-plus points in this league and then had a different role at Arizona. She wasn’t asked to score as much.”
The Mountaineers were selected eighth out of 14 teams in the Big 12 preseason coaches poll last week.
“I think we probably could have been picked a little higher based on how they finished last year and with what we return. New coach, so who knows how people look at that one. I thought maybe we were a few spots lower than I would have anticipated based on the results of a year ago. We had that conversation and put it in the back of our brains. We’ll keep moving forward and I sure hope we don’t finish eighth. That’s not the goal for us.”