MORGANTOWN — A year ago around this time, Mark Kellogg was cloaked in obscurity, as was his West Virginia women’s basketball team.
No longer.
His first year after earning his spurs at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas before they big time pulled the curtain back on him and his defense with his Mountaineers winning 25 games and millions of hearts.
And, quite oddly, it won most of those hearts in a game it lost, an NCAA Tournament game against Caitlin Clark and the eventual NCAA championship Iowa team, the No. 2 national seed.
They left their mark on the game and the game left a lot of marks on them, floor burns and bruises, in a 64-54 defeat.
Suddenly, though, they were national figures ... Kellogg, JJ Quinerly, Jordan Harrison. They were Rocky without the championship belt.
How have things changed? Well, on Wednesday, after the Mountaineers 8th of 10 allowed summer practices before a trip to Italy and Croatia, Kellogg told a story of a recent recruiting trip and a chance meeting on an airplane with a woman who had a seat open beside her.
Kellogg asked if he could sit there, made a joke about it and a conversation started. They were headed to Dallas, which was where he’s originally from and the lady was living there but originally from Wheeling.
She asked where he was from and he said West Virginia.
“What do you do?” she asked and Kellogg told her he was the Mountaineers’ women’s basketball coach.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “I have to call my husband. He will think you are the greatest thing.”
“So, there I was, on Facetime on an airplane, talking to her husband and the first thing he says ‘We watched that Iowa game.’ We hear that all the time now. People are paying attention now to women’s basketball and to West Virginia. I hope we’re building some excitement around here.”
Be advised they are. Ticket sales are at an all-time high and that successful season, that hard-nosed, furious defensive style of play has captured attention everywhere.
Kellogg admits that when he arrived — the Mountaineers third coach in three years — he knew the brand would help recruiting, opening doors that were closed at SFA, but he didn’t realize just how strong the brand was.
“I felt WVU gave you a national brand,” he said. “It’s like when we go recruiting in California or Texas, it’s like ‘Hey, go Mountaineers!’ in the airport. People recognize that brand and that allows us to go recruit.”
But something’s different and a lot of it comes from that Iowa game.
“Those Top 100 kids, I think we should be on the phone. They do take our calls. An Iowa type game helps, a lot of kids watched that it makes that conversation a little bit easier now. People see it, get excited about it and want to be part of it,” he said.
The Iowa game was that strong, although Kellogg admits he hasn’t rewatched it since.
“I remember it vividly. That’s one I don’t have look back to, it’s in my mind and forever will be,” he said.
But, he added, “I know I’ll watch it sometime.”
He’s not the only one who hasn’t watched it. His top transfer, Sydney Shaw from Auburn, didn’t see the game.
“I don’t watch basketball as much I should,” she said. “But I was impressed with the highlight tape I saw from WVU when it was recruiting me and we’ve talked about it a lot.”
It’s certainly created an image for WVU women’s basketball.
“We have a lot of eyes on us after that game,” Jordan Harrison, who emerged as the engine that drives the Mountaineers, said. “Our team, we gained a lot of confidence from that game. We feel like we can play with anybody and we’re not scared to play against anybody.”
The success WVU enjoyed last year in Kellogg’s first year brings expectations with it and expectations bring pressure to reach them.
Jordan Harrison understands what has been created.
“Realistically, if I’m watching a game I’m rooting for the underdog because they have nothing to lose so you can play free in your mind. If you don’t have anything to lose you might as well play hard. So there’s a little bit of pressure, because you’re being held to a standard where you are expected to win, but I think we’ll do well living up to the standard that’s expected.”
This year the team has a full year together with Kellogg, it has far more depth than it had and it is a bigger team, so expectations are warranted, but as Kellogg often pointed out, “It’s only July” and there’s a lot to do to put it all together.
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