MORGANTOWN — Another casualty of sorts from conference realignment will happen today, as the WVU women’s basketball team travels to 16th-ranked Kentucky.
The game is part of the annual Big 12/SEC Challenge, which for the women, began in 2017, and the Mountaineers are 4-1 in the series.
“It’s over, this is it,” WVU women’s coach Mike Carey said in his press conference Monday.
While the decisions made by both Texas and Oklahoma this summer to leave the Big 12 for the SEC in 2025 focused more on the future of their football programs, the impacts of those decisions have been felt by other sports in the Big 12.
That includes the women’s challenge series with the SEC — the men’s series is under contract through the 2023-24 season, but there was no word from the Big 12 office on Tuesday if that series would continue, either — that is officially ending because the contract was not extended.
The challenge series has been a solid building block for the Mountaineers (4-1) recently.
A year ago, WVU was the only Big 12 school to defeat its SEC opponent, and the Mountaineers’ 79-73 win against Tennessee gave them a victory over a storied program that helped boost their NCAA tournament resume.
“Me, personally, I wanted to renew (the contract),” Carey continued. “It’s not being renewed. To my understanding, the SEC is going to go with another league now.”
The Mountaineers would like to leave the series on a positive note by knocking off the 16th-ranked Wildcats (4-1), who have two of the top-four scorers in their conference in forward Dre’una Edwards and guard Rhyne Howard.
Both average 19.2 points per game.
Howard, a 6-foot-2 point guard, is a top all-around player. She also leads Kentucky in rebounding and assists and is projected by several mock drafts as the top pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft. Edwards is shooting 64.1% from the floor and adds 6.8 rebounds per game.
“They have two elite scorers and they play hard as a team,” Carey said. “They’ll trap you a little bit. Howard is very athletic. She’s a top-five draft pick going into this year.
“I’ve always been the type to let’s defend everybody. Let’s not just worry about (Howard) and then let someone else go have a career night. I don’t want to do that. We have to play solid defense.”
The Mountaineers dropped out of the AP Top 25 poll this week after falling to BYU 58-57 in the title game of the St. Pete Showcase.
WVU led that game, 21-11, at the end of the first quarter, but could not hold on.
Getting a road win against Kentucky could move the Mountaineers right back into the national rankings.
“This is why you play these games is to learn what you’ve got to work on,” Carey said. “We were really soft with the ball and turned it over too much (against BYU). That’s not us. That’s what we’ve got to get better at.”
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