West Virginia’s 28-7 season ended on a somber note Monday night after Mountaineer guard Gia Cooke got a good look at a potential game-winning shot in the final seconds, only for the midrange jumper to bounce off several parts of the rim and stay out, allowing Kentucky to prevail inside a raucous Hope Coliseum, 74-73.
“I think everybody thought that ball was going in. I thought it was a great shot,” said WVU senior guard Sydney Shaw, who tied Cooke for game-high scoring honors with 23 points. “I thought she did a good job creating a good shot for herself. Nine times out of 10, that shot’s going in. This was the 1 out of 10.”
WVU was denied a second Sweet 16 berth and what would’ve been its first in 34 years, while the Mountaineers remain without multiple wins in the same NCAA Tournament as they lost for the 12th straight time in a second-round game.
For as tough as the ending was, third-year WVU head coach Mark Kellogg wasn’t short on gratitude in his postgame press conference.
“I’ve loved this season. It’s been as rewarding for me as any season that I’ve had,” said Kellogg, having just wrapped up his 21st campaign as a collegiate head coach. “I probably needed them more than any team just from some of the personal stuff, but just life, and man, they were just fun. I thought they brought out the best in me. Hopefully I brought out a little bit of the best in them.”
WVU battled back from a 14-point third-quarter deficit that was a dozen with 10 minutes remaining. The Mountaineers never led after a 7-5 advantage, they gave themselves every opportunity to advance by making half of their 14 fourth-quarter field-goal attempts to go with four three-pointers and a 5 for 6 showing from the free-throw line over the final 10 minutes.
“I don’t think we’re a team to give up or back down from any competition,” Cooke said. “We’re all dogs. When we saw the score, we all locked in and flipped a switch. We wanted to win this game and keep moving on.”
But the Wildcats (25-10) advanced thanks in large part to double-doubles from Teonni Key (19 points, 10 rebounds) and Clara Strack (18 points, 15 rebounds) to go with a plus-16 rebounding margin.
All of West Virginia’s point production came from Cooke, Shaw, Kierra ‘Meme’ Wheeler (16) and Jordan Harrison (11), while the remainder of the team was 0 for 7.
UK, meanwhile, had six scorers and five with at least nine points. The Wildcats scored the first nine points of the third quarter and won that period, 26-14, after the matchup went to halftime tied at 36.
“In that third quarter we had some lapses a little bit. So just getting our mind shifted back to it’s all or nothing,” Harrison said. “We either win or go home. I think that got us back and locked in and ready to make that run in the fourth quarter.”
It wasn’t quite enough, though the 2025-26 campaign undoubtedly marked another step forward under Kellogg.
WVU was competitive in contest it played with the exception of a 22-point home loss to Villanova, won a game that garnered plenty of national attention against Duke at The Greenbrier, continued to improve as the season progressed, notched a Big 12 Tournament Championship and played itself into hosting first and second-round NCAA Tournament games.
All this immediately after losing one of the most accomplished players in program history in guard JJ Quinerly, a 2025 third-round WNBA Draft selection by the Dallas Wings.
“I would like to think we do it the right way with really good kids that have high character, and this is the reward when you do those things, but you’ve got to figure out how to win them,” Kellogg said. “So that’s the next step.
“We’re taking steps. We’re better today than we were a year ago at this time or two years ago. Obviously we won a title. We played at home. We haven’t done that in obviously quite some time. Hopefully from a recruiting standpoint, that should be a selling point, like we’re playing in front of 13,000 people plus the last couple nights. I think there would be a lot of kids that want to come join us.”
WVU will lose no fewer than five impact players and three starters. Harrison, Shaw and Wheeler are out of eligibility, as are a pair of top reserves in Sydney Woodley and Celia Riviere.
Cooke, the team’s leading scorer this season at 15 points, has another year of eligibility, as does Carter McCray, who started 26 contests.
Riley Maklausky was tied for third on the team with 35 threes and has the option to return, as do fellow reserves Loghan Johnson, Jordan Thomas and Madison Parrish. The latter two represent the lone sophomore and freshman on this year’s team.
Cooke, Wheeler, McCray, Makalusky and Johnson were all new additions to this year’s team by way of transfer.
Nothing suggests Kellogg, who is 78-23 at WVU, can’t find another crop of quality replacements.
“We have a plan. We do need some kids out of the transfer portal to come in and play and play right away,” Kellogg said. “If there’s a Jordan Harrison clone out there, I would be happy to take that phone call when the time is right, and a few other players, some Sydney Shaws and Memes. If we can continue to find height, that’s great, but if height doesn’t produce, then I’m not overly interested in that either.
“It’s just finding the right kids that fit that want to be here, that like what we’re doing, the direction the program is going, understand how special this state is and how you get treated here. We always have a plan. We’ll see how it comes to fruition over the next few weeks. We’ve got a couple weeks before the portal officially opens, but we do need to make some noise in the portal, and we’ll continue do that.”