MORGANTOWN — Mark Kellogg thought he had a plan. Or maybe it was a plan the WVU women’s basketball coach simply had to alter more than a few times. Or maybe it was an assembly of good ideas with several subheads and options attached to them.
He knew he had something, though, Kellogg knew that for sure. The dozens of spreadsheets filling up his computer screen this past spring was proof of that.
“You’re just trying to prepare as much as you possibly can ahead of time, but you can’t,” Kellogg said last week during an open practice session. “I think there was one day I had, like, 13 or 14 tabs open of different spreadsheets, and I was like the GM trying to go, ‘If this kid comes, this changes this,’ and then I’d have to go to the new spreadsheet. ‘This one commits, this is what it looks like.’ ”
The task at hand: Kellogg had to rebuild WVU’s roster.
Now, that sounds simple enough, but let’s look at the overall surroundings of the task.
Kellogg and the Mountaineers had just raised the bar days before, having played in front of two sold-out crowds inside Hope Coliseum while hosting a NCAA tournament regional for the first time since 1992. That came all of one week after the Mountaineers won the Big 12 tournament for the first time since 2017.
Trying to build a roster for a middle-of-the road conference team with small expectations is one thing. Kellogg was attempting to capitalize on history and for a WVU women’s program that had continually raised the bar over his first two seasons at the school.
That’s a little more complicated and it ended up being three weeks of chaos for Kellogg and his coaching staff, or as Kellogg put it, “hectic.”
Now, we’ll throw in some variables.
In the end, he finished with a recruiting class of one incoming freshman and nine additions through the transfer portal to go along with returners Gia Cooke and Madison Parrish.
He didn’t begin the journey expecting to fill 10 spots.
“We thought we had a couple more that were going to come back initially and then they made some decisions to go a different direction,” Kellogg said.
Power forward Carter McCray – a starter last season – decided to transfer for a fourth time in four seasons and ended up at Michigan State. Riley Makalusky, a key contributor from last season, entered the portal very late and ended up at Tennessee.
That stuff certainly happens. If it happens when the situation calls for replacing just a few players, fine. Kellogg now had to replace four starters, their backups and a backup for Cooke, too.
The portal opened on April 6, let the chaos begin.
He announced the signing of former Pitt player Divine Tumba a day later. The 6-foot-2 freshman forward had redshirted at Pitt last season. Just to advance the story, Kellogg also signed sophomore guard Nylah Wilson, a former five-star prospect out of Chester, Va. who was Pitt’s highest-ranked recruit last season in that program’s history.
Two former Pitt players now in Morgantown?
“We won’t hold it against them,” Kellogg joked.
On April 10, Kellogg announced the signing of former George Mason guard “ZaZa” Walton. A few days later, former Marquette forward Skylar Forbes was on board.
And then McCray and Makalusky announced they were leaving WVU for the portal.
“We had a kid leave, and I think 48 hours later we had another kid on campus and committed, so that’s literally how quickly the process goes,” Kellogg said.
Not all of that process fell on Kellogg’s shoulders or his spreadsheets. Part of this story also belongs to Cooke and Parrish, who became hosts for all of the players coming in. They added their voice, too, whether it was about how the program is run or about Morgantown itself.
“It felt like we had someone new in on a visit every day,” Cooke said. “The coaches said we had someone else coming in and I would just look over at Maddie, like, ‘Are we ready?’ ”
The names piled on, one after the other. Former UCF center Khyala Ngodu came on board and then there was 6-foot-7 center Hawa Doumbouya. Another George Mason product – Kennedy Harris – signed up, as did former BYU guard Marya Hudgins.
A top 100 freshman in Chante Murray was signed. A former West Virginia Player of the Year in Alexis Bordas (a Duquesne transfer) was added.
And then, whew, that pretty much sums it up. It was not a journey of 1,000 steps to build WVU’s roster. It took, in Kellogg’s estimation, all of 18 days.
Yes, we all expect a certain level of chaos in the transfer portal. To some degree, there is a bidding process on top of the recruiting process. One school may offer more NIL funding for a certain player. Kellogg had to decide whether or not to up his ante, too.
Doing all of that to rebuild a roster for a program with championship aspirations in just three weeks – that may be an all-timer.
“We did bring in 11 players, I think, in an 18-day period and signed 10 of them,” Kellogg said. “So, it was hot and heavy. That was a little hectic, a little stressful in certain situations, but we really, really like the group we have.”
