West Virginia head coach Mark Kellogg motions to his players during second half of the NCAA college basketball championship game against TCU at the Big 12 Conference tournament Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

They will be rolling into Morgantown on Thursday, the official starting point of what is truly a special moment to be remembered for the WVU athletic department.

They being NCAA women’s basketball tournament officials, 16th-ranked Kentucky and star players Clara Strack and Tonie Morgan, as well as the upset hopefuls from James Madison and Miami (Ohio).

Hotels are filled. Restaurants will be packed. There is enough buzz around this university city that tickets to Saturday’s first-round games sold out in about two hours.

To some small degree, the road to the Final Four in Phoenix will be played out right here in Morgantown.

And it is here that the most important question of all is asked to WVU head coach Mark Kellogg: What’s next?

Just two simple words that could be answered, honestly, a dozen different ways, with each one of those replies holding a little more significance than the one before it.

“We’re not done,” Kellogg said after the 11th-ranked Mountaineers returned home from winning the Big 12 tournament. “I don’t want to talk like this is the end of the season.”

The immediate what’s next is whether or not this group of Mountaineers (27-6) can continue to make history? It is far from being a program that is a stranger to the NCAA tournament, with this season marking their fourth consecutive berth and the program’s 17th overall.

The previous 16 trips have produced just one time when WVU advanced past the second round, coming in 1992 when there were only 48 teams invited to the Big Dance.

“I want to win that second game,” WVU point guard Jordan Harrison said. “We can’t look forward, but I don’t want this season to end like so many others have. I want to do something that hasn’t been done yet.”

That is the obvious next step for Kellogg, who has spent his first three seasons at WVU becoming a habitual step-taker. Not all of them have been historic, but they’ve all been steps that either matched past greatness the program once knew or surpassed even those expectations.

All of the steps have been forward. And now, maybe his greatest obstacle sits before him in getting the Mountaineers to the Sweet 16. It’s been 34 years since WVU has had an opportunity like it has right now.

West Virginia is at home. It’s not facing Caitlin Clark in Iowa City. It’s not traveling to Chapel Hill to face blue-blood North Carolina. Never before, since 1992, have the Mountaineers had an opportunity quite like this.

“There’s no guarantee you’re going to win,” Kellogg said. “It doesn’t guarantee that you’re even going to play in the second game. All we know is two days’ worth of games are going to be played here. We’ll have to play well just to win the first game. I don’t want us to lose sight of that.”

There is also a what’s next that concerns the bigger picture where it concerns the WVU women’s hoops team. At some point, the lights will get shut off inside Hope Coliseum. The hundreds of players and visitors will eventually make their way back home and this memorable and historical season for the Mountaineers will eventually come to an end.

As long as Kellogg doesn’t wake up that next day and tell himself, “Know what, I’ve grown tired of being a basketball coach,” and suddenly hangs up his clipboard, he will be the one charged to keep the momentum going.

It’s a great story to witness the climb up the mountain. Every coach in America will assure you it’s so much more difficult to stay up there.

Being able to take advantage of this opportunity that comes with the enhanced buzz around town and the state, not to mention a national TV audience, would be a giant leap forward for the WVU women.

If it works out or doesn’t, there’s still that what’s next question. There are No. 3 seeds to grab in the years to come, dare we say even No. 2 seeds? Programs such as UConn, South Carolina and LSU can only take up so many, after all.

More home games could be played in the NCAA tournament for WVU. More Big 12 championships are up for grabs.

Or it could take another 34 years to reach this pinnacle again.

“All of that is in play,” Kellogg said. “I don’t want to overdo it, where we do feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s so much pressure, because we’ve got one chance at this and it may never happen again.’ I don’t know that I’m ready to go there yet. I understand it. I know what it means. I know this is big.”