Struggles from behind the arc don’t keep West Virginia from dominating Salem

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — West Virginia women’s basketball players swore on Tuesday there is no adjustment to be made to playing on a court with two 3-point lines.

After the Mountaineers went 4 of 19 from long range in a 91-40 exhibition victory against Salem at the WVU Coliseum, WVU head coach Mike Carey begged to differ.

“I’ve tried to tell them to put their foot on the men’s line and then step in,” Carey said. “I knew this would happen. We called it this summer. Girls are going to shoot behind the men’s line, because they just see a line.”

Beginning this season, the men’s line is now one foot, 4 3/4 inches deeper around the perimeter than the women’s 3-point line.

“For me, it doesn’t make a difference. I don’t even notice the two lines there,” said Kysre Gondrezick, who led the Mountaineers with 18 points, but was 0 for 7 from 3-point range. “You shoot the three, you shoot the three. I don’t think we actually pay too much attention to it.”

WVU point guard Madisen Smith, echoed that same theory.

“I don’t think it’s an adjustment at all,” she said. “In practice, we’re shooting well behind (the women’s 3-point) the line anyway. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem at all.”

Players are supposed to think that way, but stats may say something different by the end of this season.

West Virginia was just one of 31 Division I teams last season that shot 36% or better from 3-point range when both lines were the same for the men and women.

The Mountaineers hit at 21.1 percent against the Tigers shooting mostly from behind the men’s line.

“Yeah, I saw a lot of bad shooting,” Carey said. “Kysre usually hits her shots. She was jumping to the left a little bit and was off balance. If we can get Kysre wide open shots like she had, she could go 0 for 7 or 7 for 7. I’m not really worried about that as much.”

For Gondrezick, it was her first game in front of a crowd since last December. She missed the Mountaineers’ final 26 games last season for personal reasons.

She went 7 of 9 inside the arc and scored in bunches in transition. Her teammates followed suit with 25 fast-break points.

Still, “I can speak for myself as I look through the stats,” Gondrezick said. “I went 0 for 7 from the 3-point line and I’m not used to that. It was just an exhibition game, so it’s good to get those kinks worked out.”

There are others to be worked out, too.

Carey said the Mountaineers played, “as a collection of individuals and not as a team.”

The Mountaineers turned the ball over 17 times and shot 39.5% (30 of 76) from the field against a Division II team that finished 8-19 last season.

“We got a lot of work to do,” Carey said. “We’ve got to box out better and get up the lanes and get to the ball. We’ve got to rebound better. On offense, we’ve got to move the ball better.”

Sophomore forward Kari Niblack had a double-double with 11 points and 18 rebounds and junior-college transfer Blessing Ejifor added 10 rebounds.

Smith scored 15 and freshman center Rochelle Norris had 14 points. Norris missed all of last season after tearing her ACL.

Junior-college transfer Arleighshya McElroy added 12 points.

“It was just our first game, so we just need to keep working together,” Smith said. “We need to keep building our chemistry a little more. We just need to keep playing together.”

West Virginia, which is trying to get back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2017, opens its regular season on Nov. 7 against Saint Francis (Pa.)

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