IOWA CITY, Iowa — For the third time this season, and for the second game in a row, the only rest WVU junior guard JJ Quinerly received came during timeouts and halftime. Quinerly played all 40 minutes in West Virginia’s 63-53 win over Princeton in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Playing on nearly two weeks of rest, Quinerly led all scorers with 29 points. She scored 15 points in the fourth quarter and went 5-for-5 from the floor and 5-of-6 from the free throw line.
“Yeah, well, obviously she has a motor. She’s a high-level, conditioned athlete, which you have to be. She’s an elite scorer. It wasn’t — we usually try to get her a break at least in the first half. Jordan got the foul, so that kind of — we just were not able to do that and it took us out of our normal rotation,” said WVU head coach Mark Kellogg.
“She’s done it before. She played 40 in the last game, too, in the Big 12 Tournament. She’s conditioned enough to do that and she’s a phenomenal scorer. All eyes go to her when she’s on the floor which makes everybody around her better, too.”
Better balance, but work to do
WVU fell short of Kellogg’s every-game goal of having four scorers in double figures. Jordan Harrison scored 15 points and Kylee Blacksten scored ten points. Blacksten, who averages six points per game, scored in double figures for the sixth time this season.
“She’s been trending this way for weeks. I’m excited for her to get to double figures. We talk about trying to get to four double figures which we still didn’t quite do, but to get three just takes a little bit of the burden off [Quinerly and Harrison],” Kellogg said.
Kellogg has consistently praised the play of Jayla Hemingway throughout the season. Hemingway picked up added minutes when Harrison was in foul trouble in the second and fourth quarters.
“I thought she defended her you know what off. I thought she was really good on the defensive end and she’s some of our toughness — I’ve said it from day one, our toughness is wrapped up into 00, that identity, so happy for her to have the super senior close that she’s had.”
Defensive gameplan
Princeton averages 15 three-point attempts per game. But against West Virginia, the Tigers went 6-of-21 from beyond the arc as the Mountaineers did their best to take away inside looks. WVU was outrebounded 23-12 in the first half but the Mountaineers won the second half battle on the boards, 16-11.
“They made two or three there felt like right off the bat in the first quarter and it was like, uh-oh, here we go. If you can make teams somewhat one-dimensional, I think that’s an advantage,” Kellogg said.
“So I think points in the paint swayed pretty heavily our way and if they were taking perimeter shots, then they weren’t getting paint touches and that was something that was important to us.”
“[Kellogg] comes and gives us goals before each game to keep them at a certain amount of rebounds or points,” Quinerly said.
“So that number was — I ain’t going to put a number out there, but they got a couple more rebounds than we expected to, and he just told them to just keep working. I mean, Kylee, Danelle [Arigbabu], everybody who was out there battled on the boards and did what we needed to do.”
“I think they did a good job of packing the paint. I think we got a lot of good looks in there. They are strong. They are aggressive. They have some size. Blacksten and some of their players off their bench, it was hard to get just those looks inside. I thought we came down with a lot of offensive rebounds and just didn’t get great looks to put it back up,” said Princeton head coach Carla Berube.
“I think we looked inside but it was also a lot of — it took a while for us to break their press so we couldn’t get into sort of our typical sets. So credit to West Virginia.”
Expensive trips to the foul line
As a team, the Mountaineers shoot 70 percent from the free throw line this season. Against Princeton, West Virginia went just 18-of-36 from the stripe. That’s a number that the Mountaineers must improve upon Monday.
“We are a better free throw shooting team than that. We’ll have to be better than that obviously on Monday night. Yeah, we’ll get it corrected I hope,” Kellogg said.
Kellogg nets first Division I “Big Dance” victory
When Kellogg has enjoyed NCAA Tournament victories as a head coach at Fort Lewis College and West Texas A&M, Saturday’s win is his first in the Division I tournament.
“It’s right on to Iowa. Unfortunately I won’t get to relish it a whole lot. Yeah, I don’t know. I never looked at it like there was a weight on my shoulders or anything like that,” Kellogg said.
“I’m excited to get it. I’ve been twice at SFA and had leads and had leads against Georgia Tech and couldn’t quite close it. It feels good, and you want to get the first. You can’t advance if you don’t win one but that’s what we want our program to be. We want to be in the postseason. We want to advance in the postseason.”