Kansas State University Athletics
Wednesday, February 27
Manhattan, Kan.
7 p.m.
Kansas State University
18-10, 9-7
90
vs
79
West Virginia
19-8, 10-6
1
2
3
4
F
West Virginia
12
23
25
19
79
Kansas State
16
19
21
34
90
K-State Uses Team Effort to Down West Virginia
Feb 27, 2019 | Women's Basketball
MANHATTAN, Kansas – Kansas State used a season-high 34 points in the fourth quarter on Wednesday night to rally in the final frame to defeat West Virginia, 90-79, at Bramlage Coliseum. K-State has won three straight Big 12 games for the second time this season and five of their last six.
With the win, Kansas State became the 18th program in NCAA Division I women's basketball history to reach 950 or more wins as a program and the third from the Big 12 (Texas, Baylor) to reach this milestone.
Kansas State (18-10, 9-7 Big 12) featured four players in double figures led by All-America candidate Kayla Goth with a career-high 30 points on 9-of-15 shooting and 11-of-12 from the free throw line. Goth recorded 15 of her 30 points in the fourth quarter, which is a school record for points in a fourth quarter. She also dished out seven assists, pulled in five rebounds, pocketed four steals and blocked a shot in 40 minutes of action.
Goth is the 24th player in program history to score 30 or more points in a game and the first since Kindred Wesemann scored 34 against Oklahoma State on January 28, 2017.
Goth was joined by 20-point efforts from freshman guard Christianna Carr and junior forward and All-America candidate Peyton Williams. Carr tied her career-high with 21 points and led the Wildcats with seven rebounds.
Williams tallied 20 points, including a 10-of-10 effort from the free throw line, four blocks, four rebounds, three assists and two steals. This was Williams's fifth game with 20 or more points this season.
The combined 51 points from Goth and Carr marks the 23rd time in program history that two teammates combined for 50 or more points in a game. The 51 combined points are the most from a K-State tandem since Brittany Chambers and Haley Texada combined for 54 against Texas Southern on March 21, 2013 in the first round of the 2013 WNIT.
K-State trailed by four, 60-56, entering the fourth quarter, as West Virginia (19-8, 10-6) ended the third quarter on a 19-2 run. The Wildcats went in front, 68-64, with a 12-4 run to open the fourth quarter. Rachel Ranke bookended the rally with a pair of three-pointers, as she ended the night with 11 points.
The Wildcats would keep the Mountaineers at arm's length for the remainder of the final quarter, never allowing West Virginia to tie the score in the final seven minutes of the game.
After West Virginia pulled within two, 68-66, with 5:43 to play Goth would score seven straight points to give K-State a 75-70 lead with 4:15 to play.
With 3:19 remaining and K-State leading by four, West Virginia's Naomi Davenport was whistled for a foul on a Carr shot attempt. Davenport then slammed the ball on the floor in frustration earning her a technical foul. Williams made both free throws from the technical, while Carr made one of two attempts to increase K-State's lead to 78-71.
Goth then buried a pair of jumpers and was 4-of-4 from the free throw line in the final two and a half minutes of the game to seal the K-State win.
After a first half that saw the teams tied at 35, K-State shot out of the locker room at halftime with a 14-4 run and force a West Virginia timeout with 6:48 remaining in the third quarter, as K-State held a 49-39 lead. Carr capped the run with her third 3-pointer of the night, while Goth added five points.
The Mountaineers would fight back into the lead, 60-56, with a 19-2 run to end the third quarter. K-State went without a field goal for the final 5:27 of the quarter. Despite the drought, K-State still shot 58.3 (7-of-12) percent from the floor in the frame.
West Virginia was led by Tynice Martin with 27 points on 10-of-27 shooting, eight rebounds and four steals. Davenport added 19 points and eight rebounds.
For the fifth time this season, K-State shot over 50.0 percent from the field for the game as they ended the night at 50.9 percent (28-of-55). The Wildcats were a season-high 28-of-34 (.824) from the foul line.
West Virginia was held to a 37.7 percent effort (26-of-69) from the floor and were 19-of-26 (.731) from the free throw line.
K-State held the edge in rebounding, 38-34, and a 32-28 advantage in points in the paint.
Kansas State will put a lid on its 2018-19 regular season home schedule on Saturday afternoon, as the Wildcats host Texas Tech at 1 p.m. Saturday's game will be Senior Day, as K-State will honor its pair of seniors – Kayla Goth and Kali Jones – in a postgame ceremony. Fans with a men's basketball ticket to that evening's game against Baylor, can purchase a general admission ticket for just $3.
Saturday's game will be broadcast on ESPN3 and will be available on the K-State Sports Network, for free at kstatesports.com and on the K-State Sports app.
WHAT THEY SAID
JEFF MITTIE, K-STATE HEAD COACH
Opening statement…
"That was one of the more entertaining games that you can go to. You saw a West Virginia team that I think is extremely talented. I think Tynice Martin is one of the top players in the country. I think (Naomi) Davenport is having a fantastic year. It's kind of what you want this time of year, two really good teams playing good basketball, going toe-to-toe for 40 minutes and that's what you saw tonight. I'm proud of our group because you know every game you're going to face adversity, you know that coming into it. You don't know where it's going to rear its head - whether it be somebody not play well or foul trouble. Tonight it was foul trouble. We had severe foul trouble in the first half, two of our energy players who really give us a lot. (Jasauen) Beard coming off her best game, I think, of her career at TCU, and gets in early foul trouble here. We got big minutes, I thought, from Laura Macke. I thought Ashley Ray came in and was physical, did some good things. I thought Savvy (Simmons) was able to just come in and settle us a little bit when we needed better ball movement. The bench really played a huge role tonight."
On the team's growth offensively since the last game against West Virginia...
"Habits have gotten better. The mature part of it is being able to trust the offense and not feeling like you need to go outside and do things on your own, that you're going to have opportunities and other opportunities. I just think we've done a good job in practice. You know, I always talk about that but I don't think it's a big secret to the fact that we've practiced really well for two or three weeks now. It's been pretty consistent. Yesterday, not one of our better practices in that we were a little goofy and I had trouble reeling them into some focus things, but their effort was pretty good, their intentions were good and it ended up okay. For a stretch, we've practiced well for four weeks so I think that has a lot to do with it."
On playing closer to a complete 40 minutes of basketball...
"I don't know about close to 40, obviously they went on a 13-0 run when we were up, but I would say somewhere in the low 30s tonight. I felt like the ball was moving. Let's take away the first three minutes where I have to call timeout. I didn't like the way we started there, I thought it was a bad start. We weren't aggressive, we're not going to impose our will on West Virginia, not going to get downhill like we talked about, not going to attack them in transition. We didn't look very good. Anyways, I think it was decent, it was pretty good. I'd still like to think we've got our best (ahead). We've now scored 120 against them, let's not get too ahead of ourselves."
On "grit" being a fair word to describe the identity the team has adopted…
"We've gotten grittier over the course of the season and we've become more resilient. It would not have been a word I would've used with this team early in this year. I wanted them to take those characteristics on, but let's be honest, young players have to earn their way to that word. We saw gritty plays tonight from Chrissy (Carr), we saw gritty plays from Laura Macke. We saw gritty plays tonight from Rachel (Ranke). She made gritty plays down at TCU and made gritty plays tonight. I expect them from (Kayla) Goth and Peyton (Williams), the veterans in there. We were missing gritty players tonight with Kali Jones and (Jasauen) Beard in foul trouble, but we had some players really take the baton and run with it."
On being upfront with his squad in terms of the postseason…
"My philosophy is if you're not talking to them, somebody else is. The message is out there - you have bracketology, you have parents, you have uncles, you have aunts, you have cousins, you have everybody out there that is paying attention to these things and they all have an opinion. Being as I'm probably the most knowledgeable of the group, I think it's important that they hear it from me and then we get back to the basics of whittling it down to what our goals are. I'll tell you right now what I told them. We talked a couple weeks ago about .500 in the league has been a pretty good mark for the Big 12 Conference. What I just told them after is that I don't know that. We have two games left and we probably better win as many as we can to put ourselves into the best position. We break it down into three game stretches, so quite frankly I don't want to hear another thing about bracketology from my staff or anybody because we're in the first of a three game stretch. We've got the second coming up on Saturday. I feel like we're playing good basketball, let's keep doing that.
"I did have the talk with them after the game, just saying that I told you this a couple weeks ago, but what I would tell you now is don't leave it up to the committee's hand. You force the committee's hand. My experience has been, you force the committee's hands and they go 'that is a tournament team'. Anybody that watched this game, I believe this is a tournament game. This is a tournament-type game, back and forth, two really good teams, both teams have players that can play professional basketball in it. This is a tournament-type game. We'll see. We've got two big ones left in the regular season and we'll see where we end up."
On whether the team is playing its best basketball of the season...
"I think it's the best basketball we've played this season, and I think the fact that we're doing it over a good extended period of time shows me that our habits are creeping into good areas. Our fundamentals are getting better. Our ability to move the basketball to the right players is getting much better. I still don't like our defense right now, our defense has slipped in the last couple weeks. That is an area that we've got to take a look at. I've told them honestly about that. I'm not happy about giving up 79 points and I'm not happy about Tynice (Martin) getting so many catch and shoot jumpers in the first half because that was clearly on the scout not to give that. These are areas where we can still improve a great deal."
KAYLA GOTH, K-STATE SENIOR GUARD
On what changed from the last meetup with West Virginia…
"I'm going to go with maturity. Just being able to learn from practice, from games, from former games, being able to learn and grasp that information then move forward from it and actually do something with it. I think that early we had a lot of halfway understanding, not a lot to really commit, and I think that as we have moved forward, shot selections have been way better and way more decisive. We've been moving without the ball a lot better. So I would go with maturity."
On beating West Virginia for the first time this season…
"It feels great. After that game in West Virginia I think that there was a lot of pent up anger I would say, that I've just been kind of waiting on. We obviously didn't shoot the ball well that game. I thought we played halfway decent, but we didn't shoot the ball all that well. Everybody was in the gym this week, everybody knew that this game was coming, and we were not going to shoot like that again. We knew we needed to shoot better to give ourselves a chance and we were able to do that."
On what clicked to be able to get 15 points in the fourth quarter…
"Just aggression. Knowing that we need to score the ball and string together a few stops, but if we string together stops and don't score, we just throw it out. Staying aggressive, I was able to get the first step by her and get to my pull up. I didn't have a whole lot of help coming and I was just looking to get to that pull up."
On how she'd describe the last matchup against West Virginia…
"I don't know that it was a fluke. They beat us pretty good because we didn't shoot the ball well. We didn't play well. It was definitely, why didn't we play well, why weren't we able to execute there, and try to learn from that and execute that like we did tonight."
On Coach's honesty when it comes to postseason…
"I appreciate it a lot. Mainly because I'm a tangible goal kind of person. I struggle with the 'we just need to win as many games as possible'. Everyone's trying to do that. No one wants to lose any games, no one wants to do that. The reality of it, in our conference, is unless you're Baylor this year, you've lost some games. So I appreciate it in the sense that knowing the tangible number that we need to get to to give ourselves a shot at the tournament is something that is really important for me to know and I appreciate very much."
CHRISTIANNA CARR, K-STATE FRESHMAN GUARD
On getting 21 points...
"(Coach Mittie) kept telling me to cut to the rim so that's kind of what was in my head. Just letting my shots come to me and not really forcing them. Just staying aggressive was probably the biggest thing, especially with Jasauen (Beard) in foul trouble, somebody needed to fill that spot of aggression. I just kept thinking in my head that I needed to keep attacking, and if not, I need to attack and turnaround and find (Kayla Goth). I think that's just kind of what worked, is staying aggressive. I didn't get down on myself for some missed threes."
On hitting a three-pointer and then going on a run…
"Honestly, throughout the game, I feel like we just had to play hard the whole game. Every loose ball counts. Even if it's in the first quarter or if it's in the fourth. I feel like even though, yeah, that was a big one, it's the ones leading up to that that really helped us out as well."
On Coach's honesty when it comes to postseason…
"I agree with (Kayla Goth). I like the honesty about it as well, just simply because we know what we have to do in order to get to the tournament and it's very black and white. There's no yes, no, maybe. We've got to win as many games as possible and if we don't come to play these last two games then we're leaving ourselves open to be on that bubble and that's something that we don't want to be this year. We don't want to be on that bubble. So I like how honest he is with us simply because then it's very 'if you come to play and you do this or do what you're supposed to do' then you'll get in. And now we know if we don't get in then we didn't simply do what we were supposed to do as a team to not get in. That's kind of the mindset that we have going forward. We're just attacking each and every game like we need to be, like we need to win it and we're on the bubble."
MIKE CAREY, WEST VIRGINIA HEAD COACH
Opening statement…
"Give Kansas State credit. They made the plays. I mean, we took a four-point lead in the third quarter. Give them credit in the fourth. They came back and took over the game."
On Kayla Goth…
"She is really good but when you do not guard her she is pretty good, too. I mean, she is a great player. I am not taking anything away from her but we did not defend her. We let her catch it anywhere she wanted. She drove us, we did not get to the ball and we did not get weak side. She is a great player. She did a great job. I mean, nothing against her but we can defend better than what we did. That is what is frustrating to me. That is nothing against her. She is a great player."
On the disparity between their two games versus K-State this year…
"Believe me, they had a lot of good looks. They just did not hit them. Today, they hit some. We did not play well against Oklahoma and we did not play well today. I am not taking anything away from Oklahoma and Kansas State, I am really not. Like I said, we had a four-point lead. The people that got us the four-point lead come back down and take two bad shots. We gave up a three on the other end, then we turned the ball over two times in a row and then we get a technical. It is ridiculous. But give them credit. I am just mad at my team. Kansas State did a great job. Give them all the credit, it is nothing against them. They did it to us. We just were not ready to play."
On what made him the most frustrated tonight…
"When we went up four there in the second half, it was our leaders. They were taking bad shots, quit playing defense, got the technical, did not block out one time. Then they took over. Once we started getting on that roll, they took over. They do a good job of passing the ball and they drove us, which usually does not happen to us that often. They did a great job of driving the ball, also."
With the win, Kansas State became the 18th program in NCAA Division I women's basketball history to reach 950 or more wins as a program and the third from the Big 12 (Texas, Baylor) to reach this milestone.
Kansas State (18-10, 9-7 Big 12) featured four players in double figures led by All-America candidate Kayla Goth with a career-high 30 points on 9-of-15 shooting and 11-of-12 from the free throw line. Goth recorded 15 of her 30 points in the fourth quarter, which is a school record for points in a fourth quarter. She also dished out seven assists, pulled in five rebounds, pocketed four steals and blocked a shot in 40 minutes of action.
Goth is the 24th player in program history to score 30 or more points in a game and the first since Kindred Wesemann scored 34 against Oklahoma State on January 28, 2017.
Goth was joined by 20-point efforts from freshman guard Christianna Carr and junior forward and All-America candidate Peyton Williams. Carr tied her career-high with 21 points and led the Wildcats with seven rebounds.
Williams tallied 20 points, including a 10-of-10 effort from the free throw line, four blocks, four rebounds, three assists and two steals. This was Williams's fifth game with 20 or more points this season.
The combined 51 points from Goth and Carr marks the 23rd time in program history that two teammates combined for 50 or more points in a game. The 51 combined points are the most from a K-State tandem since Brittany Chambers and Haley Texada combined for 54 against Texas Southern on March 21, 2013 in the first round of the 2013 WNIT.
K-State trailed by four, 60-56, entering the fourth quarter, as West Virginia (19-8, 10-6) ended the third quarter on a 19-2 run. The Wildcats went in front, 68-64, with a 12-4 run to open the fourth quarter. Rachel Ranke bookended the rally with a pair of three-pointers, as she ended the night with 11 points.
The Wildcats would keep the Mountaineers at arm's length for the remainder of the final quarter, never allowing West Virginia to tie the score in the final seven minutes of the game.
After West Virginia pulled within two, 68-66, with 5:43 to play Goth would score seven straight points to give K-State a 75-70 lead with 4:15 to play.
With 3:19 remaining and K-State leading by four, West Virginia's Naomi Davenport was whistled for a foul on a Carr shot attempt. Davenport then slammed the ball on the floor in frustration earning her a technical foul. Williams made both free throws from the technical, while Carr made one of two attempts to increase K-State's lead to 78-71.
Goth then buried a pair of jumpers and was 4-of-4 from the free throw line in the final two and a half minutes of the game to seal the K-State win.
After a first half that saw the teams tied at 35, K-State shot out of the locker room at halftime with a 14-4 run and force a West Virginia timeout with 6:48 remaining in the third quarter, as K-State held a 49-39 lead. Carr capped the run with her third 3-pointer of the night, while Goth added five points.
The Mountaineers would fight back into the lead, 60-56, with a 19-2 run to end the third quarter. K-State went without a field goal for the final 5:27 of the quarter. Despite the drought, K-State still shot 58.3 (7-of-12) percent from the floor in the frame.
West Virginia was led by Tynice Martin with 27 points on 10-of-27 shooting, eight rebounds and four steals. Davenport added 19 points and eight rebounds.
For the fifth time this season, K-State shot over 50.0 percent from the field for the game as they ended the night at 50.9 percent (28-of-55). The Wildcats were a season-high 28-of-34 (.824) from the foul line.
West Virginia was held to a 37.7 percent effort (26-of-69) from the floor and were 19-of-26 (.731) from the free throw line.
K-State held the edge in rebounding, 38-34, and a 32-28 advantage in points in the paint.
Kansas State will put a lid on its 2018-19 regular season home schedule on Saturday afternoon, as the Wildcats host Texas Tech at 1 p.m. Saturday's game will be Senior Day, as K-State will honor its pair of seniors – Kayla Goth and Kali Jones – in a postgame ceremony. Fans with a men's basketball ticket to that evening's game against Baylor, can purchase a general admission ticket for just $3.
Saturday's game will be broadcast on ESPN3 and will be available on the K-State Sports Network, for free at kstatesports.com and on the K-State Sports app.
WHAT THEY SAID
JEFF MITTIE, K-STATE HEAD COACH
Opening statement…
"That was one of the more entertaining games that you can go to. You saw a West Virginia team that I think is extremely talented. I think Tynice Martin is one of the top players in the country. I think (Naomi) Davenport is having a fantastic year. It's kind of what you want this time of year, two really good teams playing good basketball, going toe-to-toe for 40 minutes and that's what you saw tonight. I'm proud of our group because you know every game you're going to face adversity, you know that coming into it. You don't know where it's going to rear its head - whether it be somebody not play well or foul trouble. Tonight it was foul trouble. We had severe foul trouble in the first half, two of our energy players who really give us a lot. (Jasauen) Beard coming off her best game, I think, of her career at TCU, and gets in early foul trouble here. We got big minutes, I thought, from Laura Macke. I thought Ashley Ray came in and was physical, did some good things. I thought Savvy (Simmons) was able to just come in and settle us a little bit when we needed better ball movement. The bench really played a huge role tonight."
On the team's growth offensively since the last game against West Virginia...
"Habits have gotten better. The mature part of it is being able to trust the offense and not feeling like you need to go outside and do things on your own, that you're going to have opportunities and other opportunities. I just think we've done a good job in practice. You know, I always talk about that but I don't think it's a big secret to the fact that we've practiced really well for two or three weeks now. It's been pretty consistent. Yesterday, not one of our better practices in that we were a little goofy and I had trouble reeling them into some focus things, but their effort was pretty good, their intentions were good and it ended up okay. For a stretch, we've practiced well for four weeks so I think that has a lot to do with it."
On playing closer to a complete 40 minutes of basketball...
"I don't know about close to 40, obviously they went on a 13-0 run when we were up, but I would say somewhere in the low 30s tonight. I felt like the ball was moving. Let's take away the first three minutes where I have to call timeout. I didn't like the way we started there, I thought it was a bad start. We weren't aggressive, we're not going to impose our will on West Virginia, not going to get downhill like we talked about, not going to attack them in transition. We didn't look very good. Anyways, I think it was decent, it was pretty good. I'd still like to think we've got our best (ahead). We've now scored 120 against them, let's not get too ahead of ourselves."
On "grit" being a fair word to describe the identity the team has adopted…
"We've gotten grittier over the course of the season and we've become more resilient. It would not have been a word I would've used with this team early in this year. I wanted them to take those characteristics on, but let's be honest, young players have to earn their way to that word. We saw gritty plays tonight from Chrissy (Carr), we saw gritty plays from Laura Macke. We saw gritty plays tonight from Rachel (Ranke). She made gritty plays down at TCU and made gritty plays tonight. I expect them from (Kayla) Goth and Peyton (Williams), the veterans in there. We were missing gritty players tonight with Kali Jones and (Jasauen) Beard in foul trouble, but we had some players really take the baton and run with it."
On being upfront with his squad in terms of the postseason…
"My philosophy is if you're not talking to them, somebody else is. The message is out there - you have bracketology, you have parents, you have uncles, you have aunts, you have cousins, you have everybody out there that is paying attention to these things and they all have an opinion. Being as I'm probably the most knowledgeable of the group, I think it's important that they hear it from me and then we get back to the basics of whittling it down to what our goals are. I'll tell you right now what I told them. We talked a couple weeks ago about .500 in the league has been a pretty good mark for the Big 12 Conference. What I just told them after is that I don't know that. We have two games left and we probably better win as many as we can to put ourselves into the best position. We break it down into three game stretches, so quite frankly I don't want to hear another thing about bracketology from my staff or anybody because we're in the first of a three game stretch. We've got the second coming up on Saturday. I feel like we're playing good basketball, let's keep doing that.
"I did have the talk with them after the game, just saying that I told you this a couple weeks ago, but what I would tell you now is don't leave it up to the committee's hand. You force the committee's hand. My experience has been, you force the committee's hands and they go 'that is a tournament team'. Anybody that watched this game, I believe this is a tournament game. This is a tournament-type game, back and forth, two really good teams, both teams have players that can play professional basketball in it. This is a tournament-type game. We'll see. We've got two big ones left in the regular season and we'll see where we end up."
On whether the team is playing its best basketball of the season...
"I think it's the best basketball we've played this season, and I think the fact that we're doing it over a good extended period of time shows me that our habits are creeping into good areas. Our fundamentals are getting better. Our ability to move the basketball to the right players is getting much better. I still don't like our defense right now, our defense has slipped in the last couple weeks. That is an area that we've got to take a look at. I've told them honestly about that. I'm not happy about giving up 79 points and I'm not happy about Tynice (Martin) getting so many catch and shoot jumpers in the first half because that was clearly on the scout not to give that. These are areas where we can still improve a great deal."
KAYLA GOTH, K-STATE SENIOR GUARD
On what changed from the last meetup with West Virginia…
"I'm going to go with maturity. Just being able to learn from practice, from games, from former games, being able to learn and grasp that information then move forward from it and actually do something with it. I think that early we had a lot of halfway understanding, not a lot to really commit, and I think that as we have moved forward, shot selections have been way better and way more decisive. We've been moving without the ball a lot better. So I would go with maturity."
On beating West Virginia for the first time this season…
"It feels great. After that game in West Virginia I think that there was a lot of pent up anger I would say, that I've just been kind of waiting on. We obviously didn't shoot the ball well that game. I thought we played halfway decent, but we didn't shoot the ball all that well. Everybody was in the gym this week, everybody knew that this game was coming, and we were not going to shoot like that again. We knew we needed to shoot better to give ourselves a chance and we were able to do that."
On what clicked to be able to get 15 points in the fourth quarter…
"Just aggression. Knowing that we need to score the ball and string together a few stops, but if we string together stops and don't score, we just throw it out. Staying aggressive, I was able to get the first step by her and get to my pull up. I didn't have a whole lot of help coming and I was just looking to get to that pull up."
On how she'd describe the last matchup against West Virginia…
"I don't know that it was a fluke. They beat us pretty good because we didn't shoot the ball well. We didn't play well. It was definitely, why didn't we play well, why weren't we able to execute there, and try to learn from that and execute that like we did tonight."
On Coach's honesty when it comes to postseason…
"I appreciate it a lot. Mainly because I'm a tangible goal kind of person. I struggle with the 'we just need to win as many games as possible'. Everyone's trying to do that. No one wants to lose any games, no one wants to do that. The reality of it, in our conference, is unless you're Baylor this year, you've lost some games. So I appreciate it in the sense that knowing the tangible number that we need to get to to give ourselves a shot at the tournament is something that is really important for me to know and I appreciate very much."
CHRISTIANNA CARR, K-STATE FRESHMAN GUARD
On getting 21 points...
"(Coach Mittie) kept telling me to cut to the rim so that's kind of what was in my head. Just letting my shots come to me and not really forcing them. Just staying aggressive was probably the biggest thing, especially with Jasauen (Beard) in foul trouble, somebody needed to fill that spot of aggression. I just kept thinking in my head that I needed to keep attacking, and if not, I need to attack and turnaround and find (Kayla Goth). I think that's just kind of what worked, is staying aggressive. I didn't get down on myself for some missed threes."
On hitting a three-pointer and then going on a run…
"Honestly, throughout the game, I feel like we just had to play hard the whole game. Every loose ball counts. Even if it's in the first quarter or if it's in the fourth. I feel like even though, yeah, that was a big one, it's the ones leading up to that that really helped us out as well."
On Coach's honesty when it comes to postseason…
"I agree with (Kayla Goth). I like the honesty about it as well, just simply because we know what we have to do in order to get to the tournament and it's very black and white. There's no yes, no, maybe. We've got to win as many games as possible and if we don't come to play these last two games then we're leaving ourselves open to be on that bubble and that's something that we don't want to be this year. We don't want to be on that bubble. So I like how honest he is with us simply because then it's very 'if you come to play and you do this or do what you're supposed to do' then you'll get in. And now we know if we don't get in then we didn't simply do what we were supposed to do as a team to not get in. That's kind of the mindset that we have going forward. We're just attacking each and every game like we need to be, like we need to win it and we're on the bubble."
MIKE CAREY, WEST VIRGINIA HEAD COACH
Opening statement…
"Give Kansas State credit. They made the plays. I mean, we took a four-point lead in the third quarter. Give them credit in the fourth. They came back and took over the game."
On Kayla Goth…
"She is really good but when you do not guard her she is pretty good, too. I mean, she is a great player. I am not taking anything away from her but we did not defend her. We let her catch it anywhere she wanted. She drove us, we did not get to the ball and we did not get weak side. She is a great player. She did a great job. I mean, nothing against her but we can defend better than what we did. That is what is frustrating to me. That is nothing against her. She is a great player."
On the disparity between their two games versus K-State this year…
"Believe me, they had a lot of good looks. They just did not hit them. Today, they hit some. We did not play well against Oklahoma and we did not play well today. I am not taking anything away from Oklahoma and Kansas State, I am really not. Like I said, we had a four-point lead. The people that got us the four-point lead come back down and take two bad shots. We gave up a three on the other end, then we turned the ball over two times in a row and then we get a technical. It is ridiculous. But give them credit. I am just mad at my team. Kansas State did a great job. Give them all the credit, it is nothing against them. They did it to us. We just were not ready to play."
On what made him the most frustrated tonight…
"When we went up four there in the second half, it was our leaders. They were taking bad shots, quit playing defense, got the technical, did not block out one time. Then they took over. Once we started getting on that roll, they took over. They do a good job of passing the ball and they drove us, which usually does not happen to us that often. They did a great job of driving the ball, also."
Team Stats
WVU
K-STATE
FG%
.377
.509
3FG%
.320
.273
FT%
.731
.824
RB
34
38
TO
14
18
STL
11
8
Game Leaders
Scoring
Pts
30
FGM
9
3FGM
1
FTM
11
Pts
21
FGM
6
3FGM
3
FTM
6
Pts
20
FGM
5
3FGM
0
FTM
10
Pts
11
FGM
4
3FGM
2
FTM
1
Players Mentioned
G
/ Women's BasketballG
/ Women's Basketball
F
/ Women's Basketball
F
/ Women's BasketballG
/ Women's Basketball
C
/ Women's BasketballF
/ Women's BasketballK-State WBB | Feeding the Band
Wednesday, September 10
K-State WBB | Postgame Press Conference vs USC (NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen)
Saturday, March 29
K-State WBB | Postgame Highlights vs USC (NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen)
Saturday, March 29
K-State WBB | Player Press Conference (NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen - USC Preview)
Friday, March 28