No. 24 Baylor travels to No. 22 WVU looking to earn a crucial season sweep

MORGANTOWN — The time for moral victories is long gone — at least that’s the message Mark Kellogg is passing along to the 22nd-ranked WVU women’s basketball team.

An overtime loss on the road at No. 10 Kansas State on Wednesday was a missed opportunity, not a pat-on-the-back performance.

“We had some lay-ups that we missed, especially there at the end of the third quarter that I know we’d like to have back,” Kellogg said. “We probably could have got that lead into double figures going into the fourth. That might have changed the game a little bit.”

The Mountaineers (22-4, 11-4 Big 12) have exceeded expectations all season, building up enough momentum to break into the national rankings and then challenge for the Big 12 title prior to the loss against K-State.

WVU STATS

The only setbacks WVU has encountered this season have all shared a common theme: poor shooting.

That came into play two weeks ago when WVU traveled to Baylor — the No. 24 Bears are back at the Coliseum at 2 p.m. Saturday for the rematch — and was held to just 32% shooting in a seven-point loss. Against Kansas State, WVU shot just 35% from the field.

WVU’s first loss of the season came against Texas, in which the Mountaineers shot a season-low 26.7%.

“We need to bounce back from this one for sure,” Kellogg said. “This has been a little bit of a brutal stretch for us. We’ve got Baylor on Saturday, so we don’t have a long time to rest or think about this one.”

Bouncing back against Baylor (20-6, 9-6) will simply mean trying to find a way to get the ball to drop through the hoop a few more times.

Baylor’s history in the Big 12 hasn’t been to let that happen much.

The Bears own a 23-5 record against WVU, and in only eight of those 28 games have the Mountaineers surpassed 70 points.

WVU was held to 58 in the first game against Baylor, shooting just 21 of 65 from the field and just 5 of 23 from 3-point range.

At stake for the Mountaineers is to remain in position to earn a double-bye in the Big 12 tournament.

WVU is currently projected as the No. 4 seed, with the top four seeds not having to play until the quarterfinal round.

The Mountaineers’ biggest challenger to that seed is Baylor, which would be just one game behind WVU in the standings with a win heading into the final week of the regular season.

Sophomore guard Darianna Littlepage-Buggs gave WVU fits in the first meeting, finishing with 14 points and 10 rebounds, and Baylor dominated on the boards with a 32-21 rebounding advantage.

Baylor led by as many as 13 points in the fourth quarter, but WVU got as close as 63-58 with 37 seconds remaining.