MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg took a wait-and-see approach to this year's NCAA Tournament selection process.

Last year, his team was seeded eighth and faced ninth-seeded Princeton in the first round with the winner confronted with the near-impossible task of playing No. 1-seeded Iowa State on its home floor.

This year, the 16^th-ranked Mountaineers are two seeds better at No. 6 and will be playing either 11^th-seeded Washington or Columbia on Saturday at 2 p.m. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Site host North Carolina, seeded third, will play 14^th-seeded Oregon State in the nightcap. Chapel Hill is about a seven-hour drive from Morgantown and a three-hour car ride from the southern part of the state, so Kellogg is hopeful more WVU fans will be in the seats on Saturday.

"Everybody wanted something a little more regionally based," he said Sunday evening.

"That Charlotte-type area is good for us and our alumni, and hopefully, we can draw off that. People in Morgantown and throughout the state, it's very much drivable if people want to come check us out."

West Virginia is making its third consecutive NCAA appearance and its second straight under Kellogg, who sports an impressive 49-15 overall record heading into the tournament. Overall, it is the Mountaineers' 16^thNCAA trip.
Last year, the Mountaineers handled Princeton in a first-round game and then took Iowa down to the wire before losing 64-54.

The nucleus of that team is back, including senior guard J.J. Quinerly, who will be playing in her third NCAA Tournament this weekend.

West Virginia (24-7) finished fourth in the Big 12 and earned a double bye in the Big 12 Tournament where it defeated Kansas State before falling to tournament champion TCU on Saturday, March 8.

The Mountaineers' boasted an impressive NCAA NET ranking of 12, which doesn't quite match its NCAA Tournament seeding.

The other six seeds in this year's tournament – Michigan, Iowa and Florida State – are No. 23, 24 and 25 in the final regular season NET rankings and the teams right around West Virginia have much better seedings.

No. 9 Kansas State was a five-seed, No. 10 LSU was a three-seed, No. 11 Ole Miss was a five-seed, No. 13 Oklahoma was a three-seed and No. 14 Tennessee was a five-seed. Kellogg said he isn't sure what metrics the selection committee used to determine their seeding process.

"I've never been in the room to know what all the metrics are," he said. "I know they use more than (just the NET), but I guess the question is why do we put so much weight into the NET all year long and don't use that, or weigh it more heavily when we're going through it all? It's supposed to be, take the human element out and make it computer-based on what you've done for the entire season.

"We've seen in years past they don't just go off the NET, so it's not overly surprising I guess, but I don't understand the whole formula and how it works," he said.
"I was telling everybody I thought we were a six, plus or minus the seed line, so if we would have been a five, I probably wouldn't have been shocked and if we were a seven, I might not have been completely shocked either," Kellogg said.

The coach thought the Big 12 missed some opportunities to improve its overall tournament standing during the nonconference portion of the season.

Seven Big 12 teams got into this year's dance.

"I don't know if the Big 12 women, in the nonconference portion of the schedule, had as good of a year as we needed to," he admitted. "That may have probably cost us a little bit. Baylor played really well late to sneak into a top four, and TCU has the best wins in the nonconference, so we probably needed a few more nonconference wins to get more teams elevated."

West Virginia will have to do a little additional prep work to get ready for its tournament opener on Saturday.

Washington (19-13 with a 43 NET) is in the tournament for the first time in eight years, its longest tourney drought in school history. The Huskies, under coach Tina Langley, went 9-9 this year in a Big Ten Conference that sent 12 teams to the NCAA Tournament.

This will be Washington's 20^th overall appearance.

Columbia posted a 23-6 overall record and lost 74-71 to Harvard in Ivy League tournament. This will be Columbia's second straight tournament appearance under coach Megan Griffith.  For first time ever, the Ivy League placed three teams into the NCAA Tournament with Harvard and Princeton getting in as well.

"We've got the play-in game, so that doesn't necessarily help the prep," Kellogg explained. "We may just have to take a couple days to prepare for one of the teams and then we can have a couple days to prepare for the other team where they will be preparing for us on a one-day prep.

"It should be to our advantage from a prep standpoint, but they've got an extra game on the floor just like in a conference tournament when you get the double bye, and you are waiting on people who have already played," he said, noting the first quarter on Saturday will be pretty important to his team.

Following its Big 12 Tournament semifinal loss, Kellogg said he gave his players a couple days off before getting back on the floor.

"We did some skills stuff in the middle of the week, and we got back and practiced Thursday, Friday and Saturday," he said. "They were shorter practices but somewhat intense to keep their lungs and keep them playing at the right speed. The last thing I want to do is lose our rhythm, pace and tempo when you get to this point in the season."

The veteran coach admits it is refreshing seeing different opponents that have not thoroughly his team during the regular season.

"There might be some stuff that wasn't working late in the year that may work again a little bit because maybe they are not quite as familiar," he said. "It will be fun to have some new and fresh teams to play."

The team will depart later this week for Chapel Hill.