MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The more you watch Kyah Watson play basketball the more amazed you become at her all-around skills.
In fact, there’s really nothing she can’t do.
If you need her to set a screen, she can. If you need her to get a defensive stop, she does. If it’s a rebound or a loose ball that’s needed, more often than not, she’s the one who comes up with it.
Dribbling the basketball up the court to help with pressure? Yes, we’ve seen her do that, too.
Score? Well, that’s now coming along as well.
Her 19 points and 12 rebounds were like gold dust in last Saturday’s 71-62 victory at Pitt. All 19 points and all 12 rebounds were sorely needed.
“She had a fantastic game at Pitt, and I told her we needed every bit of what she gave us,” an appreciative West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg said earlier this week.
Watson comes from a basketball family. Her father, Kevin, and her late mother, Carla, were both former players whom the soft-spoken Watson credits for helping her develop her impressive court instincts and high basketball IQ.
Kyah is not assertive by nature, preferring instead to let things come to her, Kellogg admitted, and that has its positives and its negatives.
“She kind of wants the game to come to her, I feel like, and the more you press her I don’t know if she plays as well,” he explained. “She will sort of take what the defense gives her, and she will create things with her defense and her effort. That motor is really good right now, and her basketball IQ is really good.
“And she’s a pretty easy kid to coach,” he continued. “She’s pretty even keeled and like a lot of our kids, I look at her sometimes and I’ll say, ‘Kyah, we good?’ Then you ask her a question and she’s perfectly fine.”
Typically, the teams she plays on are perfectly fine as well, going back to her high school days at Rapid City Stevens High in Rapid City, South Dakota. A four-year starter there, she helped her prep team to a 73-20 record by filling up the stat sheet with 956 points, 456 rebounds, 240 assists and 174 steals.
Kyah’s 240 assists were more than WNBA legend and Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon’s had during her career at Stevens High.
She also excelled in volleyball and track before being discovered by Dawn Plitzuweit at South Dakota. There, she helped the Coyotes to a pair of Summit League Tournament championships and an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearance in 2022 before following Plitzuweit to West Virginia last year where they again reached the NCAA Tournament.
Then, when Plitzuweit left for Minnesota, Watson opted to stay in Morgantown where she is now becoming well-adjusted. In fact, she chose to stick around town for most of May while her teammates were away on break and during that time, she worked out with team coach Zach Allen and has since completely changed her body.
Those old pictures that are out there of Kyah look nothing like the Kyah Watson in uniform for the Mountaineers this season.
“She’s worked really hard and had a great summer,” Kellogg said. “I saw pictures of her from before and I watched her transform over the summer and it’s paying off.”
Kyah said her getting into great shape was more about her wanting to get into great shape than fitting into Kellogg’s up-tempo system.
“It was just something I wanted to do,” she shrugged. “That was a focus for me in the summer. I was here all May and didn’t really get a long break, so when I got back, I really just worked out with Zach and got myself in better shape to get ready for the season.
“I definitely feel like I can move better on the court getting up and down,” she added. “Coach wants us pressing and playing a faster pace so I’m just being in good shape for that.”
It was evident during the Pitt victory that Watson is fitting in just fine with what Kellogg wants to do. There was an instinctive defensive rotation that she made late in the game that ended up saving the Mountaineers two points in a tightly contested contest.
Kellogg explains.
“We were actually wrong in our rotation, and I think it was her Danelle (Arigbabu) who both closed out on the high post, and they threw it over the top of us,” Kellogg said. “The kid had a clear layup, so Kyah comes off her kid and challenges her at the rim and gets a blocked shot.
“She’s falling out of bounds and tries to save it and they called her out. Had she not been out of bounds and saved it, it would have been an absolutely unbelievable play. But even without that, it was crazy how she went from the close out to the blocked shot to save us two points.”
After watching her performance on TV, Kyah’s grandmother excitedly called her while she was on the bus returning to Morgantown. Watson said she has some family living in Chicago, but rarely do they get to see her play in person now.
As for her tremendous Pitt performance, she simply shrugged and smiled.
“I would say going into the game a big emphasis for us was rebounding. They are a good rebounding team on both ends of the floor and we couldn’t completely stop them, but we did the best that we could,” she said. “Offensively, I’m being more aggressive. That’s a conversation me and coach have a lot of just me being more aggressive looking to score.”
It’s working so far.
West Virginia returns to the WVU Coliseum on Sunday to face Youngstown State, picked third in the preseason Horizon League poll and currently 2-0 with a victory over Xavier before tonight’s game against Western Michigan.
Sunday’s contest will tip off at 4:30 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN+.