Jordan Harrison and the Mountaineers used a stifling defense to capture a conference tournament title. Now a pivotal at-large bid awaits for TCU.
Like the old cliche goes: It's hard to beat a team three times in a single season.
That was the scenario for the matchup in the Big 12 Tournament Championship on the glass court of T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. The top-seeded TCU Horned Frogs had beaten the two-seed West Virginia Mountaineers in buzzer-beater fashion on Jan. 14 in Morgantown and by nine points nearly three weeks ago in Fort Worth.
The third meeting of the year - fit with the highest stakes yet - brought out a fierce defensive mentality from the No. 15-ranked Mountaineers that pushed them to a 62-53 win over No. 10 TCU on Sunday to capture the program's first Big 12 tournament crown.
The Horned Frogs, powered by the conference's player of the year in Olivia Miles, were no match for the notoriously stifling defense of the Mountaineers, who are anchored by the league's defensive player of the year Jordan Harrison.
West Virginia forced TCU into just 33 percent shooting for the game and scored 15 points off of 11 Frogs turnovers. Miles led the team in scoring with 17 points, but shot a pedestrian 6-for-14 and 4-for-10 from 3-point range.
Harrison's offense was the catalyst just as much as her three steals were on defense. She posted team-highs with 21 points and four assists, to go with six rebounds and a perfect 10-for-10 performance at the free throw line.
"They played an awesome game today," TCU head coach Mark Campbell said postgame. "They did a heck of a job defensively and they just outplayed us. We've had great battles with them over the last couple of years and today they were the better team. We just didn't have it."
As West Virginia seals its campaign for one of the possible 16 seeds that get to host the first and second round of the NCAA Tournament, TCU, now 29-5 on the season, is likely already comfortable in that position.
The best case scenario for the Horned Frogs would be to sneak in as the top seed in an entire region, meaning each of the first four rounds would be played in front of their home crowd in Fort Worth.
Despite a back-to-back seasons as regular-season champions, Campbell's squad will have to wait for that nerve-wracking at-large bid into the March Madness bracket when it's announced on March 15.
"This hurts, but I'm so proud of what our program's accomplished," said Campbell. "It's so stinking hard to win the championship. The regular season? That's two and a half months of grinding. This group has done a heck of a job. We just didn't do enough today."