Recruiting is all about finding the right fit.
It doesn’t matter if you’re from New Haven, Connecticut, or Morgantown, West Virginia. If you have skill in your sport of choice, a coach will find you.
In the case of Bria Holmes, coaches from Morgantown didn’t “find” her in New Haven. Instead, Holmes was a McDonald’s All-American who was one of 17 players in state history to score more than 2,000 points for her career.
Now a junior at West Virginia, Holmes is the leader for the nation’s No. 17 team that will take on Mississippi State at 7 tonight (SEC Network +) in the semifinals of the Preseason Women’s National Invitation Tournament at Humphrey Coliseum. The winner of tonight’s game will play the winner of the Albany-Western Kentucky game at 2 p.m. Sunday (CBS Sports Network) at a site to be determined.
Holmes, a 6-foot-1 1/2 guard, had 36 points Monday in an 89-87 victory against Seton Hall that pushed the Mountaineers to 2-0. Last season, she led the team in scoring (15.2 points per game) and helped the Mountaineers (30-5) advance to the NCAA tournament for the fifth year in a row, which is a school record. Coach Mike Carey lost five seniors to graduation from that squad, but the 14th-year coach knows he has one of the nation’s top players in Holmes, who received votes in the preseason All-American balloting.
“Bria has gotten better every year,” Carey said. “This year, she has been asked to do a lot more. We lost five seniors and a lot of scoring was left to her to pick up a lot of slack. She is the most unselfish star I have ever had. She is a total team player. It is not about Bria, and that is great about her.”
Carey said Holmes has range out to the 3-point arc and can go off the dribble against anybody, which makes her a tough matchup for guards.
Holmes said she wasn’t worried about getting preseason All-America consideration because she isn’t concerned about individual awards.
“I just have to go out there and play my game and focus on team right now and focus on getting the ‘W,’ ” Holmes said.
Holmes said one of her strengths is getting to the basket and finishing. She said a key for the team this season is coming out hungry and playing with a lot of energy. If the Mountaineers do that, Holmes feels the team can have a solid season. She acknowledged that she is playing a bigger scoring role with the graduation losses from last season.
“I feel like last year we had a lot of help coming off the bench,” Holmes said. “This year, we don’t have as many players as we had last year. Sometimes that is really difficult. That is something we have to work on at practice.”
Carey said West Virginia likes to play an up-tempo brand of basketball, but he said the team only has a nine-player rotation. He said junior Jessica Morton and redshirt sophomore Bre McDonald are expected back this season, but he said they won’t play tonight (eligibility issue/coaches decision).
That lack of depth concerns Carey against an opponent that can go 11 players deep. MSU coach Vic Schaefer said senior guard Savannah Carter, who returned to the lineup Sunday after missing the team’s first two games, won’t play tonight or play Sunday if MSU advances to the Preseason WNIT title game.
“I am impressed (by Mississippi State),” Carey said. “They play extremely hard. They get to the ball defensively, they’re always surrounding the ball off the dribble, they can penetrate, they have shooters, and they have some size. I know they are young, but they are a very good basketball team. It will be a big challenge.”
Holmes played 40 minutes against Seton Hall and three other players logged 32 ore more minutes. Carey said he gave his team Tuesday off and will have one day of preparation for a road test against a team that was picked to finish eighth in the SEC preseason coaches and media polls.
“They play as hard as any team I have seen this year,” Carey said. “It will be a good experience for our younger players to see where we are at right now.”
It also will be a good opportunity for Holmes to showcase her skills in another part of the country. She said she initially considered going to Rutgers coming out of Hillhouse High School, but she said she did her research about West Virginia and enjoyed her official visit to the school.
“It felt like the perfect fit,” Holmes said.
Now Holmes is part of an up-tempo program that is coming off a share of its first Big 12 Conference regular-season title. Carey said West Virginia’s move to the Big East Conference opened recruiting doors into other parts of the country. He said the program had to adjust to a new style of play against bigger bodies when it moved to the Big 12 Conference. He said discipline and recruiting will be keys to keeping West Virginia, which also is No. 16 in this week’s USA Today coaches’ poll, on the national scene.
“If we get people to fit into our system, I am not worried about somebody else’s system,” Carey said when asked if he had to tweak his recruiting style when the school moved to the Big 12 Conference. “I see our style of play and I watched Mississippi State on tape and they get up the lanes and are very aggressive and high energy and that type of stuff. That is how we like to play also.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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