No. 24 WVU women’s hoops faces challenge in opener against Rhode Island
Trending
MORGANTOWN - There is some idea, Mark Kellogg says, as to who will be the leading scorer for the No. 24 WVU women's basketball team by the end of this season.
The odds-on favorite is senior guard Gia Cooke, who averaged 15 points per game last season, when the Mountaineers finished with a 28-7 mark, yet there are other options.
"I feel like with our roster, we have 12 girls who could easily be starters at any other school in the country," said BYU transfer Marya Hudgins, who averaged 9.1 points with the Cougars last season. "Having that depth, it's going to be a lot to learn. For some, it's going to be about learning to come off the bench. For other girls, it might be about scoring or it might be something else that helps us win. Having that depth is really exciting."
There is no crystal ball available, of course, so the season will have to play out. It's likely the Mountaineers will find themselves with no player challenging for a Big 12 scoring title, but with six or seven players somewhere around double figures.
"I've had plenty of years where our leading scorer averaged 13 or 14," Kellogg said. "But then we also had seven players between eight and something like that. We do have the ability to score. I might be able to guess who our leading scorer is going to be this year, but it could probably be three or four different kids right now who could lead us."
The Mountaineers will officially begin to answer the question at 7 p.m. today, when they host Rhode Island, which went 28-5 last season and lost to Alabama in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Much like WVU, the Rams had a lot of holes to fill in their roster from last season, but they do return starting point guard Sophia Vital, who led the team with 119 assists, while also averaging 7.7 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.
"She's a preseason all-league kid," Kellogg said of Vital.
Former Albany head coach Colleen Mullen was also brought in to replace Tammi Reiss, who is now the head coach at Florida. In eight seasons at Albany, the Great Danes won 139 games and appeared in the 2022 NCAA tournament.
"We're going to get challenged and they're going to be well coached," Kellogg said. "When (Mullen) was at Albany, she had one of the top 10 or 20 defenses in the country. We'll have our hands full, for sure."
WVU will counter with its own full-court pressing defense that will try and speed up the Rams, and the Mountaineers hope to use their depth to overwhelm the Atlantic 10 school.
That's the expectation, anyway, and what Hudgins had envisioned when she transferred to WVU last spring.
"In my past four years, I've never been part of a ranked and winning environment," she said. "Something I really want to accomplish is playing in the NCAA tournament. When I was in the portal and West Virginia reached out, it checked a lot of my boxes."
For a third consecutive year, the Mountaineers are nationally ranked to begin the season. They went through their preseason with much success against Virginia and Virginia Tech in closed-door scrimmages and followed that up with a 70-point win against Frostburg State in an exhibition game.
Now, the games count. WVU's mission - much like last season - is to make a climb up the polls and in the power rankings to be considered one of the top 16 schools in the nation by March in order to get the honor of hosting another NCAA regional.
All of that will be decided in the weeks and months to come. For now, Kellogg is still sorting through his hand. How deep does his roster's depth actually go? Will WVU be better in the full-court press?
And then there is the question of living up to lofty expectations. Kellogg is already on the record about the bar being set high. Hudgins said she was excited to make the attempt to reach it.
"I wouldn't say there is pressure, but it does feel surreal in a way," she said. "I'm excited. I saw a post (on social media) the other day and it said, 'No. 24 West Virginia,' and I was on the photo.
"I was like, 'Wow, I really play for a ranked team, this is awesome.' I think it's more about excitement. A lot of us are new, so it's probably exciting for a lot of us."