photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas guard Sania Copeland tries to keep the ball in bounds against Texas Tech in Allen Fieldhouse, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025.

Kansas women’s basketball suffered a blowout loss on the road against No. 18 West Virginia on Wednesday night, 76-43, after struggling to get over the hump of a nine-minute opening scoring drought.

Coupled with the Mountaineers’ full-court press, which caused Kansas fits and created a lot of turnovers throughout the game, the slow start spelled disaster for the Jayhawks. By the time Kansas got on the board, thanks to a three-point play by S’Mya Nichols with 35 seconds to play in the first quarter, the Jayhawks had accrued 13 turnovers — six of which, uncharacteristically, came from the hands of Nichols — and had allowed 18 straight points.

Nichols finished with nine turnovers on the night, though she led KU with 12 points on 4-for-6 shooting, as the rest of the Jayhawks went a combined 12-for-37 (32.4%) from the field. The Mountaineers’ Sydney Shaw scored 22, and West Virginia finished shooting 43.9% on 14 more attempts than Kansas.

While the Jayhawks struggled to even sustain offensive possessions, West Virginia didn’t have much success early on its own offensive trips, going 6-for-19 in the first to give Kansas a manageable 12-point deficit heading into the second quarter.

Nichols kept the scoring going with the first shot of the second, but even though the Jayhawks held things relatively even through the first half of the period, they still faced an 11-point deficit after Sania Copeland’s first points of the night made it 23-12. In the last five minutes of the quarter, the Jayhawks allowed back-to-back 3s before the Mountaineers closed out the half on a five-point run to go up 39-19 at the break.

As West Virginia found success, a main character was curiously absent from the Mountaineers’ explosive first half, as Kansas held their leading scorer, JJ Quinerly, to no points on only two shot attempts. On the other hand, Shaw racked up 16 points in the half — 13 of which came in the first period — and Jordan Harrison scored 11 of her own. For the Jayhawks, Nichols led with seven points as no other teammate had made more than one shot in the half.

Kansas started the third quarter by forcing three turnovers in just three minutes, but only scored two points off the opportunities and gave up two turnovers of its own to go down 43-24 on Quinerly’s first points of the night. This layup started a streak of seven West Virginia points coming off Jayhawk turnovers as the sloppy play continued into the second half. The streak lasted three minutes, and the last four minutes of the period saw WVU put Kansas in its biggest hole of the night, down 52-29 heading into the last quarter.

After three periods of forgettable basketball for the Jayhawks, the fourth quarter was no different, as they allowed multiple runs of five points and one seven-point stretch to get outscored 24-14 and fall 76-43. The fourth quarter featured Kansas’ best scoring of the night with those 14 points, while on the other side, West Virginia’s lowest-scoring period was the third, in which it totaled 13 points.

Kansas’ 13 turnovers in the first quarter led to 29 turnovers in the game, while the Jayhawks had a high-foul game by their standards, picking up 20 fouls on the night.

The loss marked Kansas’ second consecutive loss by double digits and fourth in six games, after the Jayhawks most recently lost by 29 to Kansas State on Sunday. Head coach Brandon Schneider and Kansas will take this disappointing stretch into the final leg of a road trip as the Jayhawks head to Cincinnati (13-8, 5-6) to match up with the Bearcats at 11 a.m. Central Time on Saturday.