MORGANTOWN — The 17th-ranked WVU women’s basketball team will head out on the road for two crucial games, beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday against Texas Tech.
The word “crucial” in describing any game the Mountaineers (12-2, 2-1 Big 12) play the rest of the season is obvious, considering where WVU wants to be heading into the Big 12 tournament.
That would be among the elite in the country, and in position to be among the top 16 seeds who host a regional for the NCAA tournament.
To get there, WVU faces must-win games the rest of the season just to keep pace with the other handful of teams who are fighting for the same things.
“We get to go on the road for two more, and so we’ll learn even more about our group,” said WVU head coach Mark Kellogg, who will travel to surprising Oklahoma State following the trip to Lubbock, Texas. “We’ll see if we’ve prepared the right way and if we have the right mindset once we’re on the road. It’s definitely a different feel.”
A year ago, WVU felt it was terribly undervalued, getting a No. 8 seed even after finishing in a tie for fourth place in the Big 12 and being nationally ranked for much of the season.
A season later, there are some national metrics that could be working against the Mountaineers in their quest to host a regional for the first time in school history.
It begins with WVU’s opportunity to move up in the national rankings. The number of chances aren’t as plentiful as in past seasons.
The reason: No Big 12 team finds itself in the top 10 of the AP poll — TCU (11th) and Kansas State (12th) are just on the outside — meaning there are less attention-grabbing games for the Mountaineers to play.
It’s been a rather disappointing season thus far for the Big 12 as a whole, with the conference’s RPI ranking coming in at fourth overall behind the Big Ten, SEC and ACC.
Based on those conference rankings, the Big 12 is much closer to being ranked fifth — the league is just .0037 points ahead of the Big East — than it is in catching the ACC for third.
“I don’t know if we had as good a (nonconference) season in the Big 12 as we hoped to,” Kellogg said. “That would be a fair statement. We needed a few more signature wins within the league. That may hurt us a little bit.”
Iowa State and Baylor began the season as the favorites, but neither are ranked in the top 25 at the moment.
Other nonconference losses have hurt, including WVU’s 78-73 setback to No. 4 Texas, but other setbacks have been far more damaging. Kansas State fell to Duke. Oklahoma State lost to Richmond. Utah, which just moved into the AP Top 25 this week at No. 22, has lost to unranked Northwestern and Mississippi State.
The NCAA’s NET rankings are more favorable to the Big 12’s top teams. Kansas State is seventh overall in the NET, while TCU is No. 8 and WVU is 16th.
Of course, WVU was No. 21 in the NET last season — that projects as a No. 6 seed — but the Mountaineers still fell two seeding lines.
As far as a marquee Big 12 matchup with either TCU or Kansas State, WVU faces both schools back-to-back, but those games aren’t until late February, and those two games are followed by a game against Utah.
“There’s still plenty of opportunity,” Kellogg said. “We’re using the NET. We’re using the quad system. There’s still plenty of Quad 1 and Quad 2 type wins available. Maybe not quite as many as we would have hoped or thought before the season started.”
What happens until then? Well, WVU will have to keep chugging along, while keeping an eye on what happens around them.
That means constantly checking on teams such as Tennessee, coached by West Virginia native Kim Caldwell. It also means keeping an eye on Kentucky, Georgia Tech, Alabama and North Carolina.
More importantly, it means WVU has no room for error or stumbles.
“I still think our Big 12 champion and runner-up and top three or four teams are going to have legitimate shots at really good seeds,” Kellogg said. “Everything I see still says we’ll have seven or eight teams from our league in (the NCAA tournament). You’re getting about half your teams in and seeding will take care of itself. You have to play well and win and win with some efficiency.”
