What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, West Virginia women’s basketball did something that caught everyone’s attention on Friday night.
The Greenbrier Five
You lose access to ESPN for two weeks, and you get complacent. On Friday night, ESPN and YouTube TV — my carrier — finally got their “you know what” together and reached a deal to restore the Worldwide Leader to their network. It didn’t restore it in time for me to watch the West Virginia women take on Duke.
Geez, thanks. It turned into one of the viral moments of the early women’s college basketball season, as documented by those who were on the scene at The Greenbrier, the legendary resort in West Virginia. It started at the end of the first with an altercation between WVU and Duke players that led to the Mountaineers’ bench clearing.
That led to WVU losing six players, including starting point guard Jordan Harrison, who was part of the fracas. The others were Gia Cooke, Kierra Wheeler, Jordan Thomas, Madison Parrish, and Carter McCray. In that moment, the Mountaineers lost four of their starters.
Watch the clip again and freeze it at the 21-second mark. Sydney Shaw has her hands on her head. She knew. She knew exactly what had happened in that moment. The Mountaineers were down to five players for the rest of the game and down 23-20 at halftime. Against a Top 25 team, that’s basically a death sentence. Duke lost just one player in the melee.
West Virginia won, 57-49. The Mountaineers outscored the Blue Devils, 24-9, in the third quarter. The five remaining WVU players — Shaw, Célia Rivière, Riley Makalusky, Loghan Johnson, and Sydney Woodley — played the final 20 minutes without a break. It’s one thing for a fully staffed West Virginia team to beat Duke. That’s possible. But this? How?
Well, that’s WVU’s DNA, and it’s the DNA of their coach, Mark Kellogg.
Kellogg has been a head coach for 20 years, but this is his first high-major job. He cut his teeth at Division II schools — Fort Lewis, Northwest Missouri State, and West Texas A&M — before he got the head-coaching job at Stephen F. Austin in 2015. He succeeded current Kansas coach Brandon Schneider.
That’s where I met him. I’m an SFA alum. I don’t know Mark well, but I know his coaching style well enough from watching tons of Ladyjacks basketball. It’s the same as Schneider and his SFA predecessors, most notably Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Gary Blair, whom I covered as a student journalist in 1992-93. SFA is one of a handful of women’s programs with 1,000 or more wins. We take our women’s basketball seriously. SFA doesn’t land five-star recruits. But, since Blair’s days, when the program was a perennial Top 25 team, the differentiator for the program was always defense.
It might be a full-court press. It might be a three-quarters court press. It might be a stifling half-court man defense. But if you coach at SFA, you will coach defense, and you will get the best out of your players on that side of the ball. Kellogg did that for eight seasons, as he took SFA to two NCAA Tournaments and three WNITs.
He carried that with him to West Virginia, where, let’s be fair, hard-nosed defense is a way of life. That made him a perfect fit for the job. That made him a perfect fit to try to squeeze the most out of five players for 20 minutes.
Per Mitchell Northam of SB Nation, Kellogg wrote two words on his whiteboard in the second half — Believe and Breathe.
“Those five, they gutted that thing out. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kellogg said to reporters after the game. “You see these moments on TV where everybody’s lost for words… I think this is one of those moments for me.”
I looked at the box score. I was interested in one stat in the second half — turnovers. Duke had 11. That was a start. Then I watched the replay, and I saw Kellogg do something I’m not sure I ever saw him do at SFA, except perhaps on certain inbounds plays under the basket — a 2-3 zone. SFA just doesn’t do that. Kellogg doesn’t do it either. But when presented with limited options, you adjust.
A zone can do one thing to a team not expecting it — discombobulate them. Duke clearly expected WVU to continue to play man-to-man. The Blue Devils looked lost, hence the lopsided third quarter. Duke didn’t adjust. It must have assumed WVU wouldn’t, certainly not how Kellogg did. Frankly, having seen him coach so much over the years, I wouldn’t have expected it either. It was brilliant coaching against type for Kellogg, and his five players executed it nearly flawlessly.
Plus, WVU’s social media team got to start hyping the Greenbrier Five.
And, people around the country noticed, including ESPN’s Carolyn Peck, a former coach who led Purdue to a national title.
This is a win that can super-charge a season. WVU has knocked on the door of the Sweet 16 for two years. Confidence from a win like this can do a lot for a team. They were built for a moment like Friday night. Kellogg and his program want to host in the NCAA Tournament this year. This is the kind of win the committee loves come March.
As for Monday, if the Mountaineers aren’t in the Top 25, well, we riot.
The Big 12 Football Race
Well, two weeks left until we know who will play in the Big 12 Championship game in Arlington. The options are narrowing. We’ve played this game for a few weeks in this space. Here are the rules:
One loss: Great Shape.
Two losses: No margin for error.
Three losses: Realistically done, but not mathematically.
Four or more losses: Mathematically done.
Cincinnati was the big loser this weekend. The Bearcats could have used that win. Now they MUST beat BYU next weekend to have any shot at getting in.
In Great Shape: Texas Tech (7-1). The Red Raiders have one game left against West Virginia in Morgantown on the Thanksgiving weekend. Now, anything can happen in Morgantown. But as long as Tech heals up during its bye week and beats the Mountaineers, that ticket is punched. Heck, it’s possible the Red Raiders could clinch next weekend, depending on what happens across the league.
BYU (6-1). If the Cougars win out, they’re in. They’re the only other team that controls its own destiny.
No Margin for Error: Utah (5-2), Houston (5-2), Arizona State (5-2), Cincinnati (5-2). These teams must keep on winning and hoping. Utah, Houston, and ASU are big Cincinnati fans next weekend. Each needs that chaos to have a shot at the second berth in the title game.
Realistically but not Mathematically Done: Arizona (4-3), Kansas State (4-3). To have any shot, the duo must win out, and BYU, Utah, Houston, Arizona State, and Cincinnati must fall to them. So, you’re saying there’s a chance? Sure. Is it gonna happen? Doubt it.
Mathematically Done: Welcome to the party, TCU and Baylor. With a fourth loss comes joining Iowa State, Kansas, West Virginia, UCF, Colorado, and Oklahoma State as mathematically done — at least as much math as I’m willing to do in one sitting.
