WVU Women Beat Iowa State 65-56, Run Win Streak to Nine Games

The No. 21 West Virginia University women’s basketball team came into Wednesday game against Iowa State as one of the hottest teams in the country riding an eight-game win streak and the streak lives on after the Mountaineers beat the visiting Cyclones 65-56 at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown.

WVU (14-2, 8-2) was led by redshirt senior guard Kysre Gondrezick with 24 points while junior guard Madisen Smith finished with 15 points and junior forward Kari Niblack had 11 points to go with a team-high nine rebounds. West Virginia led by as many as 12 points and despite six ties and five lead changes held the lead for the majority of Wednesday’s game.

“Tough game,” WVU coach Mike Carey said. “That’s a tough matchup for us. We had a lot of good shots. We just didn’t hit a lot of the shots. We continue to play defense. I was proud of that. For the most part, we rebounded. In the second half, we started going inside to Kari and [sophomore forward] Esmery [Martinez], which we were trying to do in the first half, we just didn’t do it. I thought Madisen [Smith] played well. KK [sophomore guard Kirsten Deans], even though she didn’t shoot well, she had five assists and zero turnovers.

“We only had seven turnovers for the game. That was big. I thought we had a lot of opportunities on the break that we didn’t take advantage of. They scored a lot of points. I thought we did a good job overall. We missed some flair picks that we didn’t call out, and they got some wide-open looks, but overall, this was a good win for us.”

West Virginia’s nine-game win streak matches a streak from last season, and the eight consecutive wins in Big 12 play is the longest streak for WVU since the 2013-2014 season when the Mountaineers won 10 consecutive conference games.

WVU made 22 of 57 field goal attempts Wednesday (38.6 percent) and forced 10 Iowa State turnovers in the win.

The Cyclones were led by Ashley Joens with 17 points and 7 rebounds in the loss. ISU attempted 39 3-pointers Wednesday — the most ever by a West Virginia opponent in program history.

WVU is back on the road for its next game with a trip to take on Texas scheduled for Saturday. Tip-off against the Longhorns is set for 8 p.m. with the Longhorn Network handling the broadcast.