MORGANTOWN — Bright spots are hard to find these days for the WVU women’s basketball team.
Just four days after putting up 99 points in a double-overtime loss against Oklahoma, the Mountaineers were held to their lowest point total of the season in a 65-47 loss against Kansas on Wednesday.
“We were in slow motion. We were two steps slow,” WVU head coach Mike Carey said. “We didn’t reverse the ball. We’d get in too deep and turn it over. How many airballs did we shoot? It was just ridiculous.”
WVU (11-10, 4-7 Big 12) was held to just 33.3% (19 of 57) shooting and needed half of the second quarter before it scored its first points in that quarter.
Kansas (16-5, 7-4) broke out in the fourth quarter and took what was a five-point lead in the late stages of the third quarter and turned it into a blowout.
“They didn’t settle for jump shots and got to the foul line,” Carey said. “We settled for jump shots.”
It was WVU’s third game playing without leading scorer KK Deans, and her replacement was freshman JJ Quinerly, who was the lone positive on this night.
The freshman scored a career-high 22 points, but even that came with her fouling out in the fourth quarter, while also committing four turnovers.
“She’s able to take people off the dribble and she can hit the pull-ups,” Carey said. “She got up the lane and got a couple of steals and got some lay-ups. Everybody else was sitting back.”
Meanwhile, the Jayhaws won their fourth consecutive game and find themselves in contention for a spot in the NCAA tournament.
While that’s a near birth right for Kansas’ men’s program, the women’s team hasn’t been there since 2013, and during Brandon Schneider’s first six years, the Jayhawks have never finished higher than ninth in the Big 12.
That’s all changed this season, in what is turning out to be a memorable season for the Jayhawks.
“We made some mistakes early in our tenure,” Schneider said. “We tried to learn from those mistakes and I think you have to give a lot of credit to our coaching staff and to our players. We have a group that began this season with a lot of belief and a lot of confidence that we could be better. To this point, we’ve continued to prove that.”
Kansas’ trio of Holly Kersgieter, Zakiyah Franklin and Chandler Prater combined for the same amount of points the Mountaineers scored.
Kansas won the game with its rebounding and free-throw shooting. The Jayhawks held a commanding 48-30 advantage on the glass and shot 23 of 26 at the foul line.
“It’s hard to run offense against their pressure,” Schneider said. “I thought we did a better job of that in the second half.”
Esmery Martinez led WVU with 11 rebounds, but she struggled offensively, going 2 for 7 from the floor. Kari Niblack added nine points and five blocked shots, but the Mountaineers struggled to find any consistency and never led past the 3:48 mark of the first quarter.
“Everyone was taking us tonight,” Carey said. “We would turn sideways and either foul or let them have a lay-up. We were two steps slow. I knew it. I saw it. We were slow everywhere.”
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