No. 17 WVU must deal with three superstars in taking on No. 10 TCU

MORGANTOWN — Maybe it’s somehow fitting TCU is just three letters considering how the 10th-ranked Horned Frogs are constructed.

Whether or not you want to call Sedona Prince, Madison Conner and Hailey Van Lith the Big 12’s version of a Big Three or Super Three — possibly taking a page from the NBA along the way — the trio are certainly the backbone to TCU’s success.

“They have some name recognition,” WVU head coach Mark Kellogg said. “A lot of people across the country know of Sedona Prince, Hailey Van Lith and our league found out pretty quickly what Madison Conner was about a year ago.

“I don’t know if we’re into the super team stuff or you’ve got to have the three-headed monsters or whatever. I don’t know that’s where we’re at yet, but certainly there is some firepower at TCU.”

WVU STATS

It’s that firepower the No. 17 Mountaineers (21-5, 11-4 Big 12) must deal with at noon Sunday if they are going to have any type of shot at taking down the Horned Frogs (25-3, 13-2).

What exactly is WVU facing in the powerful trio?

Conner leads the nation with 101 3-pointers and TCU’s 275 threes also leads the country.

Normally that would be enough to keep a coach up at night, but then the 6-foot-7 Prince factors into the equation with her 17.8 points and 9.1 rebounds per game.

Both Prince and Conner transferred to TCU last season under then first-year coach Mark Campbell. They helped TCU get to 21 wins, its first 20-win season since 2019-20.

A year later, Campbell brought in Van Lith, an Olympic bronze medalist in the 2024 Summer Games on the USA women’s 3-on-3 basketball team.

Van Lith has already played in four Elite Eights with Louisville and LSU. She’s now third in the Big 12 in assists (5.6 per game), while averaging 17.1 points per game.

“It’s certainly going to be a challenge,” WVU guard Sydney Shaw said.

No kidding.

TCU’s roster construction rings with how a non-traditional hoops school can suddenly compete with the elite if it plays the transfer portal and NIL game the correct way.

Yet there is a sidebar there. Prince, who is 24-years old, was the No. 8 overall high school recruit in 2018, but she broke her leg before enrolling at Texas — she was redshirted that year — and then had to sit out another year after transferring to Oregon.

In two seasons with the Ducks, she was a part-time starter who averaged 9.7 points over 49 games.

Conner began her career at Arizona and started just once for the Wildcats in three seasons and never averaged more than 5.8 points per game.

Van Lith was the only one of the trio who made a major impact at her previous school. She led Louisville to the 2022 Final Four and helped Angel Reese and LSU reach the Elite Eight last season. She’ll enter Sunday’s game with 2,415 points, 651 rebounds and 531 assists for her career.

“They’ve got three superstars,” Kellogg said. “Prince was a top 10 recruit in the country. Why it didn’t work out for her at Texas or Oregon, I don’t know. Conner is a big-time talent. It didn’t work out for her at Arizona. I don’t know why.

“Those kids are big-time players. They have talent throughout that roster.”