COLUMN: Mark Kellogg made a major statement by keeping the WVU women’s hoops team moving forward

MORGANTOWN — With a win on Sunday over Cincinnati, the 17th-ranked WVU women’s basketball team will capture the No. 2 seed for the Big 12 tournament. The two teams meet inside Hope Coliseum for a 2 p.m. tip-off.

If Baylor somehow pulls off a win on the road against No. 11 TCU on Sunday, the Mountaineers will finish in a three-way tie for the Big 12 regular-season title with the Bears and the Horned Frogs.

Now, neither accomplishment would be a first for the program. The Mountaineers have been in this position before back in the Mike Carey days.

The significance that catches the eye about what the Mountaineers (23-6, 13-4 Big 12) have accomplished this season is that they did it the season after star guard J.J. Quinerly graduated and moved on to the WNBA.

You may be wondering what’s the big deal. The deal is Quinerly is a Mount Rushmore-type player for a program that – and this is the part that could be argued – probably has just enough faces to even put on a Mount Rushmore.

It is not UConn or Texas or South Carolina. Those programs graduate generational-type star players on a yearly basis, only to welcome the next one on campus about 15 minutes later.

WVU does not sail in that boat, and so when you lose a player with Quinerly’s credentials, history tells us the program takes a step back. Sometimes it’s a giant step back. Sometimes it’s a small step back, but a step back, nonetheless.

The Mountaineers and head coach Mark Kellogg instead moved forward. That should speak volumes on what Kellogg is accomplishing at WVU.

“J.J. was phenomenal, and, guys, good players graduate every year,” Kellogg said. “My whole career, I’ve lost really good players. Conference players of the year, All-Americans, whether it was at the Division II level or mid-major level, you lose your best player. It happens.”

Kellogg is not naive. What he is is driven, focused and determined. Yes, he inherited a good core of players upon his arrival in Morgantown in 2023. He added to that core by bringing in point guard Jordan Harrison with him from Stephen F. Austin.

That group did wonderful things. They nearly set the world of women’s college hoops on its rear by going toe-to-toe with the legendary Caitlin Clark. That group won a lot of games, played in NCAA tournaments and earned national rankings.

That would be enough riches and spoils for most head coaches. Not Kellogg.

“We always want to be bigger than that,” Kellogg continued. “We want to be a program. I think when you’re a program, you have a great culture and you have a system that you need to get new kids to buy into it.

“We do it differently this year. Is it better or worse? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s just different, because the players are different.”

If nothing else, the statement made by the Mountaineers this season is it just may be on the verge of becoming a program, one that will consistently have high expectations. Good players will come and go, only to have new faces come in and write their own chapters to a good story.

Quinerly graduates. In comes Gia Cooke and Kierra Wheeler.

Wheeler is part of a large senior class that also includes the likes of Harrison and Sydney Shaw. That class will be celebrated prior to the start of the Cincinnati game on Senior Day.

Kellogg will have some major holes to fill for next season, crater-sized holes. In listening to him speak, when Kellogg speaks about building WVU into a program, there is a sense of belief that he can make that happen.

All coaches in all sports strive for that. They all say that’s the goal, yet few actually accomplish it. After watching what Kellogg has done over three seasons, and especially what he’s accomplished this season without Quinerly in his lineup, how could anyone think otherwise?

“The results have been similar,” Kellogg said. “It’s been that way for a lot of my career, that we’ve been able to sustain success when we’ve lost really good players.

“As good as J.J. was, as well as that group of players who are no longer here, I don’t want to take anything away from them, but don’t discredit this group talking about those guys, either. This has been a little bit different in their own way and they deserve that credit, too.”