March Basketball Is Here, And The Mountaineers Are Taking Notice
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MORGANTOWN -- You may not have noticed it but over the weekend, even with February having an extra day this year, the calendar flipped a page as we entered the weekend and that means one thing.
March Madness is upon us.
Make no doubt that West Virginia's women's basketball coach Mark Kellogg took note of the change,
"March basketball season" he began as he opened his first post-regular season press conference with a sixth seed after tying for fourth place in the final Big 12 standings. "If you are involved in basketball as a coach, a player, this is a great time of year."
Men or women, there is nothing like it and it begins with the Mountaineers playing the 9 p.m. game on Friday in Kansas City against the winner of the play-in game between Cincinnati and Central Florida.
As of Monday, there was nothing definitive on the playing status of his star guard JJ Quinerly, who suffered an injury to her knee in a collision early in the second half against TCU, but if you can read between the lines (which, perhaps, is why they invented double spacing) it sounds like he expects her to be ready to play.
"She's day-to-day," Kellogg reported. "I don't know that she could play tomorrow, but it probably looks a little better than it did right after the game. She has responded well over the last 48 hours, but we'll probably know more over the next 48 to 72 hours what it looks like for the weekend."
If that sounds sketchy, it's intentional. There are no guarantees from the medical staff on her knee that was banged early in the second half, putting her out of the TCU game for good.
But, the glass seems more than half full.
"I think it's on the lesser side, so we're hopefully going to dodge a long-term bullet for sure," he said. "She'll have an opportunity to play sooner rather than later."
Quinerly led WVU in scoring at 19.1 points per game and was second in assists, with 83, and in steals, with 88.
In that game, a 57-49 victory over TCU to put the wraps on a 23-6 regular season, the Mountaineers celebrated the birth of March with one of the best halves of basketball that played all year, ending a three-game losing streak and convincing Kellogg they were ready to enter the postseason on an upswing.
"It's different. There's no doubt about it," Kellogg said of basketball in March. "You are hanging on to every possession. Every possession has a life of its own and that can be early and that can be late. I thought we played TCU like that. We were hanging onto every defensive stop, every offensive rotation … moving the basketball, sharing. I thought we played like it was March, and it was March.
"It was early in March and not a tournament setting but you are playing for championships now. That bring on a different identity."
Oddly, as big time as the Big 12 Tournament is, to Kellogg, who is in his first season at WVU after spending his career at the mid-major or lower level, coming to the Mountaineers from mid-major Stephen F. Austin, there is less pressure than as a mid-level coach or player.
"The feeling now going into the Big 12 Tournament is different than it is at the mid-major level," Kellogg said, noting that heading into the conference tournament as mid-major is life and death as far as your season goes.
See, mid-major conferences normally will get only one bid to the NCAAs and that is to the team that wins the conference tournament, no matter what had transpired through the regular season.
"You had to win," Kellogg explained. "Absolutely had to win those three games at the mid-major level. It didn't matter in any way, shape or form what we had done. I think one year we were 27 in the NET - which was, I think, RPI then. We were not going to get into the NCAA Tournament if we didn't win the conference tournament.
"Last year, I think we were 61, which was about where West Virginia was, but we had no chance of getting in," he continued. "The pressure at that level going into the conference tournament feels a little different than it does now."
Imagine that, if you will. At the lower level the conference tournament carried more pressure with it than does the Big 12 of the SEC or the ACC or the Big Ten tournaments because they get multiple bids.
"The goal doesn't change. You want to win the conference tournament. You want to advance. These are big time games that will help prepare you for the NCAA tournament. The excitement doesn't change."
But it isn't one and out .. and no matter who you are or where you are playing, that is an uncomfortable situation to be in. Knowing that he is playing now for NCAA Tournament seeding and not survival, does Kellogg approach it any differently?
"That's why I wanted to be here," he said. "That was the hard part of being at the mid-major level. You have these crazy years. We had one year where we had one game where we just shot really bad in the conference tournament. We were maybe Top 5 in the country in shooting percentage and got to the conference tournament and had a night … and it wasn't in a good way.
"You do that and you're going to the WNIT and feel like you didn't accomplish some of those dreams. That was the hardest part for me, all the success we had and you go so defined by the conference tournament."
Kellogg was asked if he has to recalibrate his thinking about the tournament in a different setting.
"I don't know I reset …. I'm still a competitor and want to win those games just like I always do, but maybe there's more pressure on the student-athletes as a mid-major player. "You have to respect the student-athlete and what those tournaments mean to them while here, you're playing for seeding and for moving up a line [in the bracket] or moving down a line if you don't do something well.
"But you always want to win a conference championship. You always want to hoist the trophy at the end."
No matter the level, there is no higher feeling than being atop a ladder cutting down the net.