No. 20 Kansas State women’s basketball, the No. 5 seed, used a hot first-half shooting effort from the field to take a double-digit lead. Still, No. 4 West Virginia came back to secure a 73-69 win in the quarterfinals of the 2025 Phillips 66 Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship at T-Mobile Center on Friday.
K-State (26-7) was led by senior Kennedy Taylor, who carded a personal season-high 21 points on a perfect 9-of-9 shooting and added three rebounds. Taylor is the first player in Big 12 Championship history to go perfect from the field on nine or more field goal attempts.
“I felt like I was trying to get in a good position and make the pass easy for my teammates. So I did exactly what Coach Falco told me, stay poised and patient in my shot,” Taylor said to K-State Athletics.
The Wildcats scored 33 points in the first quarter, shooting a scorching 13-15 from the field and knocking down five triples as well.
The 33 points set the school record for points in any quarter in a Big 12 Championship game and tied the Big 12 record for points in a quarter, equaling the mark set by Baylor on March 12, 2021.
“I felt like they understood where we needed to get the ball,” head coach Jeff Mittie said. “I felt like they understood what to stay away from because against West Virginia, it’s not always about what you want to do; it’s what you want to stay away from.”
West Virginia scored 23 points in the first quarter, which was needed to keep pace with the hot-shooting Wildcats.
However, West Virginia, who has the number one defense in the Big 12, locked in and did what it does best, holding K-State to just 36 points over the next three quarters.
The Mountaineers got great performances from All-Big 12 guard JJ Quinerly, who scored 24 points and Jordan Harrison, who scored 19 points, which was just enough offensively to carry the Mountaineers to victory.
Other high scorers for the ‘Cats include Temira Poindexter with 16 points and guard Serena Sundell with 10 points and nine assists, nearing a double-double. Sundell set the school record for assists in a season with 233, breaking the previous mark of 229 held by Shalee Lehning from the 2008-09 season.
After the hot-shooting first quarter, both teams settled in defensively as the second quarter was low scoring with the Mountaineers outsourcing the ‘Cats 13-11. At the break, K-State held the 44-36 lead.
In the second half, West Virginia found its offense and mixed it with stellar defense to get back into the game and eventually take the lead in the third quarter.
However, K-State took the lead back going into the fourth thanks to a bank in three to beat the buzzer by Poindexter, which gave K-State momentum along with the two-point lead.
In the fourth quarter, the action tightened up the lead see-sawed between the two teams. After a layup by Taylor with 1:53 to go, K-State held a slight 69-67 lead. However, West Virginia locked in for the final two minutes and held K-State scoreless while ending the game on a 6-0 run to get the victory.
“It was a heck of a game — heck of a game,” Mittie said. “Both teams battled, I thought, extremely hard,” Mittie said. “When you have two really quality teams playing, someone is going to walk out with a loss.”
With TCU winning this afternoon, the Mountaineers will meet the regular season Big 12 champion Horned Frogs in the semifinals in Kansas City on Saturday.
As for K-State, the Wildcats now turn their attention to the NCAA tournament and will await their seeding and placement during the Selection Show taking place on March 16 at 7 p.m.
“As I’ve said numerous times, we’re an interesting case because of missing the [Big 12] Preseason Player of the Year for, I guess, now 13 games, whatever the number is,” Mittie said. “I think this team has done enough. I think this team has shown that we’re a really good basketball team.”
