IOWA CITY, Iowa –
Mark Kellogg and his coaching staff are the only first-year staff to get a team into the second round of this year's NCAA Tournament as his Mountaineers take on No. 1-seed Iowa tonight at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa.
It's been a year of firsts for Kellogg, who is still a couple weeks shy of one year on the job.
His 25 victories are the most from a first-year coach in school history, and he is the first to win an NCAA Tournament game in his first season at the helm.
His team could achieve another significant first if it can pull off an upset of the No. 1-seeded Hawkeyes, considered the darlings of women's college basketball because of star player Caitlin Clark.
"Yeah, super excited about where we are," Kellogg said Sunday afternoon. "It has come together probably quicker than most people, I guess, would have thought. I don't know about in our locker room. I think we thought we had a chance to be pretty good, and to be pretty good early."
Kellogg admits it wasn't an ideal situation last spring, taking over a West Virginia program going on its third coach in a 12-month span, despite coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance last year.
"Honestly, West Virginia was a really, really good fit for me; first off, for Coach Kellogg, the way we play, the hard work, the blue collar, coal mining community - so passionate about their Mountaineers just across the whole entire state," he said. "So, it really fit us; it fit my family. Then from the players' side -- Mike Carey was the coach, longtime coach, so much toughness, defense and pressure. Then Dawn Plitzuweit took over, and that's motion offense and half-court man, and I came in and combined a little bit of both of those identities. It kind of meshed a little bit."
Kellogg took the players from each of those former coaches and blended them with the seven players he brought in. It was basically a 50-50 split between the old and the new.
"Those kids that were recruited by Mike Carey wanted to get out and defend," he said. "
JJ Quinerly has set out to be the all-time steals leader at West Virginia. That's the one goal she gave me when I got here. That was it. That was the random number that she wanted. And
Jayla Hemingway and those kids that have been here wanted to play that way. And Dawn added some motion offensive kids, which we tried to start that way too and run some motion, and maybe we've gotten away from that as the year's gone on.
"But it just kind of blended from the on-the-court play. I've always played the same way with the press and mixing defenses," he said. "So that wasn't new for me. I didn't know if our team would pick this up quite as quickly as it did, but it just fit. It really fit early, and they've just kind of taken off with it."
When Kellogg was considering the West Virginia job last spring, he studied the returning players and became intrigued with how they would match his style of play. When he accepted the position, his first job was to sell the current players on his long-term vision.
"While you're interviewing, you're trying to study and see what you're walking into. I know those kids fit really well with what we did. I thought they would come back, but you never know until you get there, and we get to know each other, and they see the vision and can at least have an idea what that vision looks like once I painted a picture for them," he said.
Even though Hemingway was going on her third coach in three years at WVU, she was already invested in the program after spending her first college season at Mississippi State.
"I think for me, personally, just being in West Virginia, when I first committed, I didn't even know where West Virginia was," she explained. "But finally being able to go there in person and just being able to see the environment and see the fans and how everyone there was so welcoming and just embraced me, it really put a lot of -- you know, it was a big factor in my decision."
Plitzuweit recruited forward
Kylee Blacksten from Colorado, and she quickly took to Morgantown, which meant she was interested in listening to Kellogg's vision.
"West Virginia is such a community, like everyone there has your back no matter what, so, I think that's something that's huge," Blacksten said."Also, (Kellogg) had a plan coming in, and he met with all of us and talked about it. I feel like he really eased a lot of us."
"They were pretty much all bought in," Kellogg added. "That group really wanted to stay together, wanted to do something like they're doing, do something special. I'm so proud they're getting rewarded because they did choose to stay. This day and age, a lot of them don't make that choice. So, really proud that group chose to stay and be Mountaineers."
He continued.
"Did I have a vision that my program could get to the postseason? Sure. Did I think we could win a game? Yeah, probably. Maybe not this quickly, but I sure hoped that it could happen.
Again, I think it's special. I think we need to take it in but understand at the same time our season is on the line, and there's a lot that comes with that, but understand where we are and who we're playing against and the environment that they've created here," he said. "Man, that's special, and that's a really, really cool thing for our kids. It will be an experience and a memory they have the rest of their lives."
Kellogg said they set goals of reaching the postseason and advancing.
"I said that in the (introductory) press conference on whatever that was, April 5 or 6,, a year ago, and here we are advancing in the tournament, and playing in a fantastic league that prepares you for opportunities like we got (Saturday), and we'll have (tonight)," he said.
"I'm really proud of the group and the buy-in, and it's the collective group in that locker room that really is just tight-knit. We had six returners, seven new ones. So, it was really a battle of how could we blend this and how quickly could we blend it? Really, by the end of the summer that thing was blended, and that team was clicking from a locker room perspective."
Tonight's game is a great opportunity for Kellogg's program in a great atmosphere in front in front of a captive national audience.
"Man, what a great experience. If you're a competitor, this is what you live for. Our team, I think they'll be super excited for this. I mean, just what a great atmosphere. This is as good as it gets right now in women's basketball, and any basketball," he concluded.
Tipoff for tonight's game is 8 p.m. ET and the contest will be televised nationally on ESPN. Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage begins at 7:45 pm and is also available on WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.
