CHAPEL HILL, NC – Winning 50 combined games in two seasons isn’t easy. Just ask North Carolina head women’s basketball coach Courtney Banghart.
Now in her sixth season in Chapel Hill, she accomplished the feat three times in 12 years at Princeton. For West Virginia head coach Mark Kellogg, Saturday’s victory over Columbia in the first round of the NCAA Tournament made him the second coach in program history to reach that plateau.
Throw in the fact he’s the first to do it in his first two seasons and Banghart stands impressed with the coach she’ll line up across from Monday’s second round game at Carmichael Arena.
“You don’t just get to win because you want to. You have to go find a way and he has found a way 50 times in two years to beat the team on the other side of the ball. It’s not easy and you have to win a lot of different ways, right? How we won yesterday, Oregon State, is going to be different than how we have to win against WVU,” she said, “He’s had to do that 50 times. Especially at a new place, you’ve got to figure out that place pretty quickly, what’s attractive to the student-athletes at that place, what are the pressures at that place? So he’s navigated really well, which is what’s so great about March.”
The word “unprecedented” gets thrown around a lot in sports, often followed by the word “success.” However, when it comes to the start Kellogg has had to his tenure in Morgantown, you can put those two vocabulary terms together without an ounce of hyperbole.
Saturday’s 25th victory marked the first time WVU has collected a quarter-century’s worth of wins in back to back seasons and Kellogg now stands alone with the program’s all-time winningest coach Mike Carey as the men to lead the Mountaineers to 50 wins in two seasons.
He’s done it all in just 65 games on the job.
“I said I think even at the (introductory) press conference, I was a sustained success guy. I think that’s one of the hardest things to do in college athletics, maybe more so this day and age with everything going on. Yeah, we were fortunate. I was fortunate to walk into some really good players that chose to stay. That was important. We pieced together some really good ones a year ago and added some transfers and then were able to do that again to sustain it,” he said.
Senior guard JJ Quinerly has not only been a crucial part of the success Kellogg has enjoyed the last two years, she’s been dealt one of the toughest hands in college sports in the meantime. Recruited by Carey, she played under his watch as a freshman before playing for Dawn Plitzuweit as a sophomore, Plitzuweit’s only season at WVU before leaving for Minnesota.
She says Kellogg has brought a different attitude to the program that she didn’t find with her first two head coaches.
“He’s consistent. He’s the only coach that’s stayed with me for two years. He just believes in us. I think he believes in us more than I’ve seen with a lot of coaches I’ve had at West Virginia so definitely a special coach for sure,” she said.
There’s an energy about the Mountaineer women’s basketball program that starts with the man in charge and is carried out by the players on the floor. It’s not just the high tempo, in-your-face style that West Virginia displays between the lines that has brought them this far.
If you ask the players, there’s not much they don’t do together and that translates when they step onto the court.
“Outside the court, we all get along really well. Probably the only people I hang out with,” forward Kyah Watson said, “But on the court, I think we do play really well together. We kind of have that same goal, all the same goals.”
Quinerly joins Watson as two of four starters that have been part of all 50 of Kellogg’s wins at West Virginia. She says there’s a bond that’s been formed in this team that goes well beyond basketball.
“We all stay together. We go out, hang out outside of the court. We’re always together. I think we’re probably the only people we hang around with back in Morgantown if we’re not going out to find other friends or anything like that but it’s definitely a good group of girls and I love them,” she said.
Take a coach with a mindset to not just win but to sustain winning and a team of players that connect on a level outside the game and something special can come together. Kellogg is quick to say that he doesn’t pay attention to the numbers often.
He’s the coach who says he rarely looks at the score in the first quarter, right?
Even if he isn’t looking at the numbers, they still paint the picture. In just 65 trips down the tunnel, he’s become the third-winningest coach in program history, trailing just Carey and Kittie Blakemore.
To invert a common turn of phrase, for Kellogg, he doesn’t ask how many. He asks how.
“I never set out, I guess, necessarily saying we need to win 25 or I was going to try to win 50 in the first two years. It was, how can we leave a mark? How can I put in a style and system and develop this culture with great character kids and staff that allows us to do that? That’s really all it is for me. I’m just loving this right now because I get to go to work every day. I’m watching the team achieve essentially at the highest level. We’ve done some remarkable things in two years,” he said.
The Mountaineers get another chance to make history on Monday night against the third-seeded Tar Heels. West Virginia has reached the Sweet Sixteen just once in program history and this team has set out to change that.
Kellogg isn’t quite ready to look ahead toward what a win against UNC would mean yet. A trip to Birmingham to play two-seed Duke? That is going to remain a dream, at least for one more day.
“I don’t know if I’ve allowed myself to get there yet mentally,” he said, “But if we do, when we do, ask me and I’ll give you maybe a little better answer on what it feels like to get there. But we’ll dream about it and we’ve talked about it. But I’ve not allowed myself to go there yet. Too much work to be done. “
As for his unwavering star, Quinerly is far from bashful about her intentions on Monday night. She and her teammates have a goal to accomplish and they want to get it done, no matter who is in the way.
“I had a goal to make history at this school and it would definitely add to my resume for sure,” she said, “It would be a big one.”
There isn’t another head basketball coach that has stepped onto campus in Morgantown, women’s or men’s, that can say their first two seasons matched what Kellogg has done. If his team walks out of Carmichael Arena on Monday with a victory, it’ll be yet another notch on the belt of a man that has done nothing but walk in the door and win.
What comes after that? Everyone will have to wait and see because he isn’t letting himself look that far ahead yet.