MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — KK Deans looked up at the fourth-quarter clock twice Saturday against TCU and couldn’t believe any time had ticked off the WVU Coliseum scoreboard.
“I couldn’t wait for this game to be over,” she said with a laugh after the game.
Injuries and foul trouble were in the back of the Mountaineers’ minds as they continued to weather the Horned Frogs’ attempts to complete a comeback. Leading-scorer Kysre Gondrezick did not play in the second half and point guard Madisen Smith was rolled up on in the third quarter and did not play again.
Deans and Kari Niblack each had four fouls, so it was a juggling act to finish for head coach Mike Carey, but the Mountaineers stepped up defensively on the final TCU possession as the Horned Frogs were unable to get a shot up in an 81-78 WVU win.
“Needless to say, that was a gut-check,” Carey said. “Give those girls who were on the floor at the end a lot of credit. It seemed like we kept losing a player and we were able to pull out the win., so that was good to see.”
BOX SCORE: http://archive.statbroadcast.com/317970.pdf
Coming off an upset loss last week to Oklahoma, the Mountaineers needed to get back on track against the Horned Frogs, who came in with a 3-10 Big 12 mark.
WVU (17-3, 11-2 Big 12) held the lead most of the the game, but TCU (8-11, 3-11), led by Lauren Heard, refused to go away. Heard fouled out late in the fourth quarter, but she scored a career-high 38 points, and without Smith or Gondrezick, the Mountaineers were running out of guards to defend Heard.
Deans, a sophomore who hadn’t played point guard since high school, was forced into the role offensively. She also had to play smart defensively with four fouls late.
“It took everything I had,” she said. “Every possession felt so long but we knew how much it mattered. We all locked down and got the job done.”
While they were down two guards, the Mountaineers welcomed back Jayla Hemingway, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Recovering from a knee injury suffered Jan. 20, Hemingway missed a month, but provided 20 minutes off the bench.
“She didn’t score a lot of points (4) but she did a lot of good things,” Carey said. “She hit a couple big foul shots down the stretch, did a great job defensively. She and Jasmine (Carson) played excellent coming in. They had to stay in there midway through the third quarter and I was a little worried about that with our conditioning, but it is what it is. We just had to go ahead and plug them in.”
It was Senior Day for Gondrezick and Blessing Ejiofor, so it was the last game at the Coliseum this season. The final four regular-season games will be on the road, beginning at Iowa State on Wednesday.
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