MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Mike Carey took the halftime box score and took it directly to Kari Niblack on Thursday.
Next to her name it read four points and two rebounds.
“That wasn’t good enough for her,” Carey said. “She’s too good of a player, so she picked it up a little bit in the second half.”
Niblack did just that and finished with 13 points and five rebounds, as the 25th-ranked Mountaineers ran past Coppin State, 82-47, in front of a season-high 10,663 fans inside the WVU Coliseum.
A season removed from being one of the Big 12’s top freshmen and the league’s Sixth Man Award winner, Niblack has gotten off to the start she hoped for as a sophomore.
Adjusting to the switch from center to power forward has accounted for some of that. Foul trouble has played a bigger role.
“All my life, I’ve been known as that rebounder,” Niblack said. “Coach Carey said I only had two at halftime. I was even talking to myself and saying that wasn’t good enough. I needed to do better. I just knew I had to pick it up.”
What certainly helped her was she didn’t get called for a single foul, allowing her to be more aggressive in the second half.
“No fouls. No fouls,” Niblack joked, as she did a little dance at the podium. “I’m trying to play a lot smarter.”
Kysre Gondrezick scored 20 to lead the way, her fourth straight game with at least that many.
“I’m just trying to keep myself in a groove right now,” she said. “Moving forward, I’ll just try to keep playing my game. I know that my game is shooting the ball and creating. I feel like I can create more and I need to do a better job of that.”
For the first time this season, WVU (4-0) had five players in double figures, in what was the most balanced effort of the season.
Tynice Martin broke into the starting lineup for the first time this season and finished with 17 and Esmery Martinez and KK Deans both came off the bench to add 10 points. Martinez nearly missed out on a double-double with nine rebounds.
“There are areas we are starting to excel at,” Gondrezick said. “Our interior presence is getting better. Rochelle (Norris) is starting to get a lot better, given the fact she didn’t play last year and she’s just getting her feel for the game.
“Kari is starting to become more assertive and aggressive and we need that from her.”
Niblack came out in the third quarter and scored six points in the paint, and while she didn’t commit a foul, she drew six of them from Coppin State (0-4) and got to the free-throw line nine times.
“I think this year, everyone is going to eat and everyone is going to chip in,” Niblack said. “That’s exactly what we did today. We did not execute our offense the way we should have. Sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t.”
Even though WVU shot 18 of 35 (51%) in the second half, Carey did not like what he saw as a group.
“I wasn’t happy with our ball movement. I wasn’t very happy with today at all,” he said. “We just don’t have enough ball movement. We have too many people going one-on-one all the time. Nobody is setting up anybody.”
The Mountaineers’ home crowd got a boost from Education Day and the Coliseum welcomed 9,000 kids from area elementary and middle schools. They certainly brought a lot of enthusiasm into the arena.
“There was a point where I thought I lost my hearing for a second,” Niblack said. “They were really loud. I had to cover my ears at the free-throw line at one point. It was really good to have them all out there.”
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