The West Virginia women’s basketball team will hit the road to start a busy week after battling several injuries the last time out to beat Kansas.
The Mountaineers are scheduled to face No. 17 Texas on Sunday at 4 p.m. ET at Moody Center in Austin, Texas, to kick off a three-game week that also features matchups at Texas Tech and at home against Kansas State.
“I thought some young ladies had to step up and make things happen, and I thought we were able to do that,” WVU coach Dawn Plitzuweit said after the win over Kansas. “We’ve got to find ways and our young ladies have to do our best to recover and be as aware as possible of how to take care of themselves because it’s a grind right now.”
WVU (16-8 overall, 7-6 Big 12) was without Savannah Samuel, one of the team’s top players off the bench, for the second straight game, and without starters Kylee Blacksten and Jayla Hemingway, on Wednesday when the Mountaineers held off Kansas 62-60 at the WVU Coliseum to split the regular-season series with the Jayhawks. Redshirt freshman forward Messiah Hunter also went down early Wednesday with an injury.
While Madisen Smith continued her strong fifth-year campaign with 17 points in the victory, leading scorer JJ Quinerly had an uncharacteristic performance with just six points. Others stepped up with multiple players unavailable, like Isis Beh, who had 13 points and seven rebounds in the win.
Splitting the series moved WVU to fifth in the Big 12 standings. Baylor is also 7-6 in league play, but the Mountaineers claimed a win over the Bears earlier this season in Morgantown.
Now the Mountaineers face the team sitting atop the standings.
“I look at the standings, but I try to take it game-by-game because you can’t look too far ahead in the future," Smith said. "You’ve just got to win games, win the games you can and just see where it goes from there."
Texas (20-7, 11-3) is coming off a 66-61 loss at No. 22 Iowa State on Monday, but prior to that had won seven consecutive games, including a 69-56 decision against WVU on Feb. 1 in Morgantown.
The Mountaineers struggled to score early in the first meeting, but made it a one-possession game heading to the fourth quarter, in which Texas guard Rori Harmon scored nine of her 14 points, including the final seven for the Longhorns, to pull out the win.
Sonya Morris led Texas in the first encounter with 17 points, while Taylor Jones added 12 and Shaylee Gonzales had 11. Morris hasn’t played since a Feb. 4 game at Kansas due to a lower body injury and is day-to-day heading into Saturday’s game, according to a report from The Austin American-Statesman.
Sarah Bates had 12 for WVU and Quinerly had 11 in the previous loss to Texas.
The Mountaineers will have two more games in the upcoming week -- at Texas Tech on Wednesday and against Kansas State on Saturday at the Coliseum.
“It’s very crucial,” Smith said. “We’ve got to go on the road next. We’ve got two road games and we’ve got to be able to pull them out.”
Texas leads the all-time series 16-10 -- including three straight wins -- and the Longhorns are 8-2 against the Mountaineers in Austin.
Sunday’s game will be televised on ESPNU.
Jared MacDonald covers WVU athletics. He can be reached at jmacdonald@hdmediallc.com. Follow @JMacDonaldSport on Twitter.
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