Over the last few weeks, WVUsports.com highlighted members of the 2015-16 West Virginia University women’s basketball team. The 15th and final installment of this feature includes senior guard Bria Holmes.
Work hard, play hard. That is the motto senior guard Bria Holmes plans to live by in her final season as a Mountaineer. Known as a humble player on and off the court, Holmes wants her game to do the talking this season. And even though her career at West Virginia University is coming to an end, the sky continues to be the limit for Holmes, as the opportunities for her basketball career are endless.
Holmes is one of four players returning to the Coliseum court this season, and with such a young and inexperienced squad, Holmes knew that she had to step up and take on more of a leadership role. She knew that she had to show them what it took to compete at the next level.
“I think I have slowly progressed taking on a leadership role with this team every season,” Holmes explained. “When I first arrived on campus, I wasn’t much a talker. Now, I feel like I talk too much. I think it is a good role for me to play on this team, since I have been here for four years now. I know what coach (Mike) Carey wants and expects from us.”
What Carey expects is their best day-in and day-out, and even though the 6-foot-1 stature still has a lot to learn, Holmes has always given it her all out there on the court.
Holmes is a unanimous, two time All-Big 12 First Team selection, and was named a preseason All-Big 12 player for the second consecutive year. Last season, Holmes averaged 18.8 points per game and scored a WVU junior record 716 points. Following her performance in the 2014-15 season, she earned invitations to the USA Basketball World University Games and Pan American Games Team Trials.
However, all the accolades that she has received throughout the last four years are used as motivation towards becoming a potential WNBA draft pick.
“It is only motivation to keep moving forward,” Holmes noted. “I want to go hard. I have to go hard. Everything I do is hard. I just let it go in one ear and out the other, so whatever happens at the end of the season, happens. My job is to come out here and play the game of basketball, and then everything else falls into place.”
The New Haven, Connecticut, native believes that this team has all the right ingredients to let everything fall into place this season, but first and foremost, the Mountaineers have to prevail against the nonconference opponents in order to standout in the Big 12.
Most recently, the Mountaineers traveled west to Spokane, Washington, for the 2015 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Challenge on Nov. 22-24. The Mountaineers faced Gonzaga, USC and Grand Canyon over the course of three days.
The team then travels back to Holmes’ home state of Connecticut on Sunday, Nov. 29 when WVU plays Yale to conclude the Hall of Fame Challenge. The New Haven native couldn’t be haper to return to her home state.
“There is going to be a lot of people,” Holmes noted. “I never been home to play a game in Connecticut since I been here, so it’s going to be a great experience for me. I am going to be happy.”
As Holmes finds her way home, the Mountaineers have to find themselves.
“One of our expectations this season is to win the Big 12 title once again, but first, we have to find out who we are,” Holmes explained. “We don’t know who we are yet, and how great of a team we can be. We have to show great intensity in order to come out on top.”
WVU was picked to finish sixth in the Big 12 preseason poll and has received a handful of votes in the Associated Press and coaches’ polls. It is not going to be an easy task, but Holmes and the Mountaineer squad is up for the challenge at hand.
