MORGANTOWN — In the end, it was a beneficial meeting for both Mark Kellogg and Sydney Shaw.
The public result of the pairing will go on display for the first time at 7 p.m. Tuesday, when the No. 16 WVU women’s basketball team hosts Towson (Md.) inside the WVU Coliseum.
More to the point, though, Shaw’s abilities are already well known inside the WVU practice facility and with Kellogg and his coaching staff.
“She needs to be an impact-type player for us,” Kellogg said of Shaw. “What we’ve seen, so far, tells us that should be the case. It gives us another threat and Sydney has been an elite shooter up to this point.
“She plays with some swagger about her. She’s playing freely right now, which is what we want from her.”
That’s what Kellogg needed in his second season at WVU, someone who could come in and become another scoring threat to go alongside J.J. Quinerly, Jordan Harrison and Kyah Watson.
The chance to be an impact player is exactly what Shaw was looking for when she entered the transfer portal after spending two seasons coming off the bench at Auburn.
Yet Kellogg wasn’t simply going to hand over the keys to the car and yell, “You go girl.”
Shaw was a top 50 recruit nationally in 2022, coming out of DME Academy in Daytona Beach, Fla., but had never quite lived up to that billing in Auburn, where she averaged 7.6 points a game as a freshman and 6.6 per game last season.
“Being here, it forced me to be a smarter basketball player and not just rely on athleticism and instincts,” Shaw said. “I think my understanding of the game has grown a lot since I’ve been here.”
And that’s what Kellogg needed to see. When scouting Shaw, it was evident she had the athletic gifts, the size and speed to be a top player in the Big 12.
What he didn’t need was a player to come in and start forcing up a bunch of bad shots just to add to a stat line.
“My shots are starting to make a lot more sense to me,” Shaw continued. “What’s open? What don’t we need? Time and clock come into play.
“I think off the court I’ve grown a lot as a person. (WVU coaches) made sure of that, and that’s helped me a lot on the court, as well. It’s been an overall development.”
That development already saw Shaw lead the Mountaineers in scoring at 20.3 points per game during their exhibition tour of Italy and Croatia this summer.
“I definitely had to think about what I was going to bring to the table, because they were asking a lot of me,” Shaw said. “It was something I asked for. It was like, ‘Cool, I get to do this for them.’ As far as stepping on people’s toes, that wasn’t a concern. Everybody here wants to win. There’s no stepping on toes when you’re doing things the right way to win.”
Winning is what these Mountaineers are expected to do. Their No. 16 ranking is the highest WVU has been ranked to start a season since 2017.
The goals are lofty, with WVU expected to challenge for one of the 16 bids to host a NCAA tournament regional site come March, not to mention a Big 12 championship.
To that point, Shaw has already seen first hand what it takes to get there.
Playing in the SEC at Auburn gave her the view of going up against national powers South Carolina and LSU.
She knows the talent level those programs have. She knows how big and fast those rosters are.
And she’s spent the last seven months getting to know the talents and strengths of the Mountaineers, too.
“We’re right there,” Shaw said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the coaching. You look at these great teams, they all have great coaches.
“Great players want to play for great coaches. I think we’re right there.”
