MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia women’s basketball’s roster currently consists of 13 players. However, first-year head coach Mark Kellogg will not have a full selection of players when the season begins on November 7.

One player, Zya Nugent, will miss the whole season due to injury. Nugent, who followed Kellogg to West Virginia, redshirted at Stephen F. Austin last year because of an injury. According to Kellogg, the same injury will force Nugent to miss this season, too.

Luckily for Kellogg, that appears to be the only significant injury in the preseason. But, there is another major factor that could limit his roster.

“We don’t have a ton of depth,” said Kellogg “We’re waiting on a couple waivers as well, like the men’s team, so we need a couple of those to come through to add to the depth.”

According to Kellogg, transfer guards Ainoah Holzer and Ashala Moseberry are waiting on decisions from the NCAA on their waivers to play this year.

Holzer is a redshirt freshman who did not play last year at Purdue due to injury, but she was a talented prep player coming out of Switzerland two years ago. Moseberry played two seasons at South Plains College in Texas, and she was a first-team All-Conference player last season.

If both of their waivers are denied Kellogg would be down to 10 players on the active roster entering his year in charge of the program.

“I know kind of where we’re at in the process. I think Ashayla’s is a little ahead of Ainoah’s, like as in we may here sooner,” Kellogg said.

Other than that, the head coach doesn’t have an update on either players’ waiver status. He added that waivers have become harder to get accepted over the last year.

“In my mind, I’m kind of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” he said.

Kellogg is not unfamiliar with having a very short bench. He mentioned he had a roster of roughly nine players in his first season at Fort Lewis College in 2005. His team went 16-13 that season — the third-lowest single-season winning percentage Kellogg has ever had as a head coach.

Things weren’t all bad, though. That season helped him develop at least part of his press defense that he still deploys to this day and will use with West Virginia.