MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — As her teammates surrounded Kysre Gondrezick Saturday night, the West Virginia guard nearly collapsed into their collective arms before heading into the locker room.
It had nothing to do with the near-Herculean effort Gondrezick put forth, scoring 24 points and adding five assists in the Mountaineers runaway upset of No. 17 Texas, 92-58, at the WVU Coliseum.
Instead, the exhausting effort came just one day after the passing of her father, Grant, who died Friday at the age of 57.
“I couldn’t imagine the feelings that were going through her,” said WVU forward Kari Niblack, who finished with eight points and helped hold Texas star center Charli Collier to a season-low five points. “Her putting together the game she had, I commend her. I respect her more than anything.”
According to a tweet Kysre Gondrezick put out on Friday, the passing of her father came unexpectedly.
Grant Gondrezick was a former star at Pepperdine who played two seasons in the NBA with the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Clippers. Most recently, Grant was coaching high school basketball in Michigan.
“Our prayers are with Kysre and her family,” WVU head coach Mike Carey said. “You have to give her credit, she came out and played extremely hard. I’m very proud of her and the team. We always say we’re a family and we really are. When she’s hurting, we’re all hurting.”
The Mountaineers (8-2, 2-2 Big 12) kept Collier — the projected No. 1 overall pick in this year’s WNBA Draft — in check by not letting her touch the ball.
Collier, who averaged more than 23 points per game going in, took only one shot in the first quarter and then picked up her third foul early in the second quarter and sat out the rest of the first half.
She played 21 minutes, but her only other shot of the game came on a 3-pointer with 7:56 left in the game. By that time, WVU already led by 32 points.
“I thought Kari did a great job from the beginning and I thought Rochelle Norris came in and did a good job on her,” Carey said. “Esmery (Martinez), at times, had to picked her up. We did a good job of fronting her. The one time she popped out for a three, she hit it, but we’d rather her be shooting threes than getting lobs in the paint.”
Gondrezick, too, picked up three fouls in the first half, but had already begun the damage with 14 points.
Much of that came on fast breaks, as the Mountaineers constantly got ahead of Texas defenders and beat them down the floor for lay-ups.
For the game, WVU held a 24-12 edge in fast-break points.
“We felt we could run, but we had to rebound,” Carey said. “They like to dribble-drive, so they get downhill a lot. Because of that, they’re guards got stuck in the paint sometimes and we were able to get the rebound and get out and run.”
WVU held a commanding 46-29 halftime lead, but never let the Longhorns (8-2, 2-1) back in the game.
Martinez added 19 points and 10 rebounds, while Madisen Smith chipped in 17 points.
It was the most points the Mountaineers scored in a game since hitting for 94 against Bryant on Nov. 15, 2018. It was their most points in a Big 12 game since scoring 97 against TCU in 2016.
“The main thing was to stay focused and our goal was to win,” Smith said. “No matter what the score was, it was zero to zero to us. We never stopped playing. It didn’t matter how much we were up, we were going to keep playing with the same intensity.”
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