MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With six blowout victories in six games at home, the No. 12 WVU women’s basketball team expects tougher challenges this weekend as the Mountaineers compete in the Gulf Coast Showcase in Estero, Fla.
West Virginia will open the three-day tournament Friday at 1:30 p.m. against High Point (3-3). The eight-team, traditional bracket tournament features No. 4 Texas. The Mountaineers would face their former conference foes in UT if they advance to Sunday’s final.
“I know we are not playing road games. But we are going on the road for essentially the first time that these games count,” said WVU head coach Mark Kellogg. “I’m excited to see what we can do outside the Coliseum now. We felt like we’ve established a pretty good identity. We’ll take it on the road and see what we’ve got. Hopefully we’ll get better. I think we’ll know a lot more about our team than we know right now.”
“We playing a little better teams now,” said WVU senior guard JJ Quinerly. “Hopefully we get to play Texas in the championship.”
West Virginia will face either Boise State or Illinois State on Saturday. Oddly enough, the Mountaineers will play just three games from December 2-31 after playing three games in around 72 hours this weekend.
“I am not as young as I used to be,” Quinerly said. “We used to do that in AAU basketball. It is going to be difficult but you’ve just got to take the good with the bad and go out there. You’ll get treatment after the game. So we should be fine going into the next game.”
“Three games in three days, it is a lot. At times, it is maybe a little too much,” Kellogg said. “But I think you just learn so much about the toughness and it doesn’t always go as planned. We went down to Puerto Rico last year and won two terrible games. They were ugly. We had to defend and different people had to step up.”
With quick turnarounds in between games, Kellogg will likely go deeper into his bench if needed. 14 Mountaineers have played in at least five games so far this season.
“We need to have a lot of kids play. We need to spread out the minutes to survive the weekend. And the way we play doesn’t help. We can’t play that way probably for three consecutive games. So we are going to have to pull off of it at some point I would imagine, or use our depth to spread out the minutes,” Kellogg said.
“We don’t really have shootarounds like we normally have. There are going to be walk-throughs, probably in the hotel ballroom. So it is a little bit of a different approach. But that will be good for us because we haven’t had to do that yet.”
Following this weekend’s tournament, the Mountaineers (6-0) will have just two games remaining before the start of Big 12 play. WVU visits Colorado on December 21. Kellogg hopes to have more defined roles for players throughout the roster.
“The versatility of this team has been nice. It is still a work in progress for me. I have used the word ‘separation’ a lot with all and I still need a couple of players to separate a little bit. I think some have started to separate some. So we’re trying to figure out some lineups. I just think we can play differently. I think throughout a long season, you need to be able to win games differently. I think we have the personnel to do that a little more this year than we did a year ago.”
The Mountaineers opened the season ranked 16th in the Associated Press poll. They have since climbed to No. 12.
“That number is getting up there. I think we have 351 or so Division I teams and you are considered one of the elite of the elite right now. That’s hard, it is really, really hard. That’s special. I don’t want to completely discount it. But it is not something I just want to sit and talk about very often.”