MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — A four-game losing streak is now in the rearview mirror for the West Virginia women’s basketball team, courtesy of Sunday’s 79-71 victory against Iowa State.
It was anything but easy, despite the Mountaineers scoring the most points in a game since Nov. 21.
“I told the team what I was most proud of was the effort, even though we made a lot of mistakes,” WVU head coach Mike Carey said.
Kysre Gondrezick led the Mountaineers with 21 points and Tynice Martin added 18 and WVU (14-5, 4-4 Big 12) survived what may have been the weirdest final two minutes ever seen in a basketball game.
Facing a 14-point deficit at the two-minute mark, Iowa State (12-8, 4-5) did not back off.
Instead, the Cyclones went into a full-court press — “We’re not a pressing team at all,” Iowa State head coach Bill Fennelly said. “We got a couple of steals and got our motor going a little bit.” — and created scoring chances off of WVU turnovers.
“We made some mistakes, especially at the end,” Carey said. “I don’t know what we were doing. We had a couple of people throwing it in and they kept throwing it away.”
Behind an 8-0 run that took all of 23 seconds, Iowa State got as close as 75-69 with 39 seconds remaining.
In all, Iowa State outscored WVU, 12-6, in the final two minutes and both teams combined to call five timeouts.
“It was odd,” Fennelly said. “It felt like we were calling timeouts like in an NBA game. Timeout, timeout. I’m sure all of the TV people liked all of the commercials. For us, we were just trying to extend the game.”
West Virginia’s four-game losing streak knocked the Mountaineers out of the national rankings and sank them to the middle of the pack in the Big 12 standings.
WVU now goes on the road for two games against Oklahoma on Wednesday and Oklahoma State on Saturday, in what represents two crucial opportunities for WVU to begin to climb back up the league standings.
“We were never out of it,” Martin said. “We went on a four-game losing streak, which that is what it is, but we were never out of the conversation.
“It would be great to go back to go on another stretch of six or seven wins or whatever, but I don’t think we were ever out of anything.”
West Virginia’s defense held the Big 12’s leading scorer, Ashley Joens, to just 11 points on 3 of 7 shooting.
Some of that credit goes to foul trouble. Joens picked up two fouls in the first quarter and then was called for her third on an offensive foul with 8:33 remaining in the second quarter.
She sat out the rest of the first half and did not start the third quarter.
“I’m a lot better coach if she’s playing and not sitting next to me,” Fennelly said. “It changes our lineup, obviously. We tried to go with two bigs a little bit and tried to find a combination.
“I thought we were lucky to be down nine at halftime, to be honest. We sat her to begin the third to let her ease back into it, but she could never get in the flow of the game.”
WVU junior center Blessing Ejifor finished with 10 rebounds and survived an injury scare.
Chasing after a rebound in the third quarter, Ejoifor’s right ankle gave out and her foot appeared to have completely turned on its side. She returned to the game a few minutes later.
“It’s the same ankle she’s sprained before,” Carey said. “I didn’t think she’d be out.”
With 10 games left in the regular season, Carey hopes the Mountaineers aren’t out of the Big 12 picture, either.
“I saw a lot of positives,” he said. “I just told them in (the locker room), let’s just build on it. Let’s build on it and get ready to go play on the road.”
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