Will the third time be the charm for West Virginia?
The No. 15-ranked Mountaineers take on No. 10 TCU for a third time this season, with the Big 12 Tournament title on the line between the No. 2 seed and No. 1 seed, respectively, in the conference. The title game tips off at 5 p.m. ET on ESPN.
The Horned Frogs are aiming to replicate last year’s
program-best season by pairing the Big 12 regular-season championship with the tournament championship. West Virginia has one Big 12 tournament title in program history, captured in 2014.
In mid-January, the Mountaineers hosted the Horned Frogs in Morgantown. The ending was exciting, as Marta Suárez hit a buzzer-beating 3 to allow TCU to escape with the 51-50 win.
But otherwise, the matchup was a mess, in a way that was possibly predictable between two of the nation’s better defensive teams. As Josh Felton recently highlighted, WVU has an aggressive defensive identity, which helped them cause TCU to commit a season-high 24 turnovers. The Horned Frogs, the best field-goal percentage defense in the nation, lived up to that standard, deploying their size to hold the Mountaineers to 28 percent shooting.
The second meeting wasn’t quite as ugly, but defense still ruled the day in the 59-50 TCU win.
The Mountaineers played another grimy game in Saturday’s semifinal to earn the opportunity for a third shot at the Horned Frogs. WVU required a late 3 from Gia Cooke to secure the semifinal win over Colorado, 48-47. As indicated by the final score, scoring was scarce, as WVU won despite shooting 31 percent from the field and 23 percent from 3; they also made less than 70 percent of their free throws.
TCU’s semifinal win also wasn’t very elegant. Matched up against a Cinderella Kansas State squad, TCU, down by a point, 33-32 at the half, steadily began to pull away in the third quarter. That was when Suárez popped off for 14 of her game-high 22 points. The Horned Frogs’ defense then sealed the 74-62 win by holding the Wildcats to 25 percent shooting in the fourth.
Needless to say, it won’t be surprising if the two teams combine to score less than 100 points.
However, neither side is devoid of offensive talent. While streaky, the aforementioned Suárez, who averages over 17 points per game, is a certified sharpshooter, with Donovyn Hunter and Taylor Bigby also shooting over 35 percent from 3. Then, of course, there’s Olivia Miles, a triple-double threat who can set her teammates up for triples—or bury them herself. In her lone season in a TCU uniform, Miles has made her mark, with almost 20 points, 7.1 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game.
Cooke leads the Mountaineers with almost 15 points per game, while Kierra Wheeler adds over 13 points and 7.5 boards. Jordan Harrison assumes the primary playmaking duties with 5.2 assists per game, in addition to captaining WVU’s defense.
