WVU athletics looks a lot healthier these days, and the latest national ranking backs that up.
CBS Sports recently stacked all 68 Power Four schools by overall success across football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball. West Virginia landed at No. 32, a solid finish for a department that has been building momentum under Wren Baker.
The Mountaineers were helped by a strong run across several sports, even with a few programs still early in their current coaching tenures. Ross Hodge was in year one, Mark Kellogg was in year three, Steve Sabins was in year two and Jen Greeny was in year two.
WVU does not field softball, and men’s and women’s soccer were not part of the evaluation, which makes the No. 32 placement even more notable. Pitt came in at No.
It wasn’t a perfect year in Morgantown, and football was the clear exception. Rich Rodriguez’s first season back ended at 4-8, a frustrating result even if it was understandable.
Elsewhere, though, the Mountaineers gave Baker plenty to point to.
The men’s basketball team didn’t reach the NCAA Tournament, but it did close the year on a strong note by beating Oklahoma in the College Basketball Crown championship.
Women’s basketball delivered one of the biggest highlights of the year. Under Kellogg, whom the article calls one of the nation’s best coaches, WVU won the Big 12 Conference tournament and hosted in the NCAA Tournament for the first time 1992.
The soccer programs also put together impressive seasons. The men finished 13-5-3 and the women went 14-3-4, with both teams bowing out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Volleyball added another encouraging sign, going 15-15. That record may not jump off the page, but it marked the program’s first season at .500 or better since 2021 and only its third since 2017.
Then there was baseball, which stacked up a string of program firsts and reached the College World Series after hosting a super regional.
With Kellogg, Nikki Izzo-Brown, Dan Stratford and Sabins guiding those programs, Baker has reason to like the direction of the department. Add in the recruiting work being done by Hodge and Rodriguez, both heading into year two, and WVU suddenly looks like a place where NCAA Tournament bids and bowl appearances can be a realistic expectation across the board.
That’s a big shift from the recent past, when the Mountaineers were juggling constant change and a difficult adjustment to college sports’ new reality. For now, the signs point to a program that may finally be past a lot of that turbulence.
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