West Virginia coach tones down Caitlin Clark trash talk as teams set to meet

West Virginia women’s basketball coach Mark Kellogg toned down some of the trash talk about Iowa and Caitlin Clark, as the No. 8-seeded Mountaineers are set to take on the Hawkeyes in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Kellogg was heard telling players and their families at a Selection Sunday watch party they were looking to send Clark "packing" if they met up in the tournament. The remark quickly caught the attention of the college basketball world.

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"I’m not a trash-talking … I wasn’t out to get Caitlin Clark. It’s not Mark Kellogg versus Caitlin Clark," Kellogg said before the team defeated Princeton in the first round, via the New York Post. "Somebody else in the room is the one that used the ‘packing’ line to me, and it turned into, ‘Well, guys, if we want to do something special, we have to win one, and then we’d have to send Caitlin Clark home.

"You know how social media works. The clip just keeps getting shorter and shorter, and then finally, by the end of it, it was Mark Kellogg is calling out Caitlin Clark."

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Clark scored 27 points against Holy Cross, and her game against West Virginia will be her final in Iowa City as she is set to play in the WNBA later this year.

West Virginia beat Princeton 63-53, with Madison St. Rose scoring 22 points.

The Mountaineers will certainly try to pull off a major upset in the second round, but the task is much easier said than done.

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