WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.V. — Mark Kellogg had two words written on his dry-erase board: Believe and breathe.
There wasn’t much else the Mountaineers could do besides that. Playing against No. 15 Duke at Colonial Hall at the Greenbier with just five players for all of the second half, West Virginia had to stay calm and keep its composure. And, as improbable as it seemed, the Mountaineers had to have faith that they could win.
Kellogg’s message was received by his players. And so was a brand-new gameplan.
“That’s the craziest game that I’ve ever been a part of in my coaching career, without question,” Kellogg said. “I couldn’t be more proud of the resiliency, the guts, the grit, all of the things that I think our team is. We talk at West Virginia all the time about just what this state represents, and we want our teams to kind of mirror that.”
The Mountaineers adapted and persevered. With just one starter in the lineup and end-of-the-bench contributors playing key roles, West Virginia stayed out of foul trouble in the second half, knocked down free throws and — somehow, someway, in something straight out of a Disney movie — pulled off a 57-49 upset victory over the visiting Blue Devils in front of a sold-out crowd of 1,210 fans in a ballroom at a resort in southern West Virginia.
In official records, this contest — the Skechers Greenbrier Tip-Off — will go down as a neutral site game. But fans wearing blue-and-gold filled the temporary bleachers and created an electric atmosphere. To make it feel even more like a home game for the Mountaineers, John Denver’s famous “Take Me Home, Country Roads” played over the loudspeakers after the win. Kellogg wasn’t expecting to hear the West Virginia anthem since his team was playing three hours south of Morgantown, but grabbed the five players and said, “Y’all get over here. Let’s enjoy the heck out of out of this one.”
For Kellogg, now in his third year leading West Virginia, nothing has been sweeter than singing that song with those specific players after this marquee victory. It was the Mountaineers’ first regular season win over an AP-ranked opponent away from Morgantown since Dec. 8, 2019, when they won at No. 10 Mississippi State.
How it all happened was difficult to explain for Kellogg.
“Those five, they gutted that thing out. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kellogg said. “You see these moments on TV where everybody’s like lost for words… I think this is one of those moments for me.”
Duke coach Kara Lawson didn’t need to search her thoughts for too long to put together her assessment on how the game found its final result.
“I thought West Virginia was terrific in the second half. They just played with great competitive spirit. They earned the win… I can handle when a result doesn’t go in your favor when you put it out there and you lay it out there. Unfortunately, tonight, we didn’t lay it out there, and they did,” Lawson said. “That’s why they won. They won because they earned it and they deserved to win.”
Lawson’s Blue Devils led 23-20 at halftime, playing an extremely Duke game in the first half where they emphasized a defensive-first mindset and were attempting to grind out a victory. And then, the game got turned on its head.
As the halftime buzzer was sounding, a scuffle ensued after Duke’s Jordan Wood screamed “let’s go” in the face of West Virginia’s Jordan Harrison. The Mountaineer responded with a shove, and then more shoves followed and five players left West Virginia’s bench.
Following a lengthy deliberation between the referees at halftime, Wood and Harrison were both ejected for fighting and five additional West Virginia players were ejected for leaving the bench. Duke’s Ashlon Jackson and Arianna Roberson were also given Flagrant 1 fouls for contact, which put West Virginia in the bonus and gave the Mountaineers two free throws to start the third quarter.
But when presented with what was now facing West Virginia, it was hard to envision a scenario in which it could win the game. Sydney Shaw was the only starter who wasn’t booted from the contest and she hadn’t scored a single point in the first half. In fact, all of the players who scored in the first half for the Mountaineers were watching the game from the locker room in the second half.
“When you have nothing to lose, you might as well just put it all out there,” Shaw said. “When you have five players and no bench, and the other team has their entire bench, you’re not exactly the first choice to win. So, we were definitely just playing loose.”
In addition to Shaw, the players Kellogg was left to rely on included Butler transfer Riley Makalusky, Texas Tech transfer Loghan Johnson, fifth-year guard Sydney Woodley, and Célia Rivière — a senior junior college transfer who had never played more than 20 minutes against a Power 4 opponent in two seasons at West Virginia.
Kellogg quickly mulled over the gameplan and narrowed his already limited options. On offense, he decided he would finally put the ball in Shaw’s hands after she had been badgering him for reps at point guard. On defense, the Mountaineers would sit in a 2-3 zone. They had to be careful with fouling, and they had to create their own opportunities to get to the free throw line.
It worked. West Virginia outscored an out-of-sorts Duke team 24-9 in the third quarter to take a commanding double-digit lead. Against the zone, the Blue Devils seemed lost and bewildered, like they were greased and blindfolded while trying to navigate an ice rink.
“We started the third quarter flat, and I thought (West Virginia) got a lot of confidence once they started scoring that, you know, like, ‘Hey, we can, we can do this.’ And we didn’t respond well. We didn’t have anybody play well, to be quite frank,” Lawson said, before quickly adding that she thought Arianna Roberson and Taina Mair played “with the appropriate level of effort.”
Lawson continued: “But no one else on the roster (played well), and so that’s an indictment on me. I’ve got to be better. Clearly, I didn’t have them ready after everything that happened before halftime to come out.”
West Virginia shot 14-of-18 from the free throw line in the second half and outrebounded the lengthy Blue Devils — armed with multiple McDonald’s All-Americans in the frontcourt — by two. Duke turned the ball over 11 times in the final two periods, which the Mountaineers flipped into nine points. The Blue Devils were also just 8-of-22 on layups for the entire game.
Shaw powered the Mountaineers with 16 points, seven rebounds and three assists, while Rivière tied her single-game career-highs for both scoring and rebounding with 12 points and eight boards to go along with three assists and a steal.
“I’m practicing every day really hard, and I’m always ready for my teammates and this program,” Rivière said. “I just do what I do, and play smart.”
Duke charged back to cut the lead to four points with 36 seconds to play, but Shaw knocked down her next four free throws attempts while Duke misfired on its next two jumpers. Down eight points with 11 seconds to play after Emilee Skinner’s off-the-mark shot, the Blue Devils stopped fouling and allowed the Mountaineers to dribble out the clock. Rivière turned to a section of West Virginia supporters, flexed, screamed and soaked in the signature victory.
“I was really happy to win that game,” Rivière said afterwards in a short and sweet way.
While he was disappointed that six of his players were tossed from the game, Kellogg said he hopes this win can be a “kind of a rallying point for this group.” West Virginia is now 4-0 on the season.
One more time: West Virginia, with just five eligible players in the second-half, beat a Duke Blue Devils team ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll, by multiple possessions.
Ultimately, if the Mountaineers’ victory could be summed up in one simple statement, it would be this: West Virginia handled hard better.
