For the second straight game and for the third time this season, WVU junior guard JJ Quinerly only had a break during halftime and during timeouts. Quinerly participated in every minute of West Virginia’s 63-53 victory over Princeton in the NCAA Tournament’s opening round.
Quinerly, who had not played for almost two weeks, led all scorers with 29 points. She shot 5-for-5 from the field and 5-of-6 from the free throw line to score 15 points in the fourth quarter.
Indeed, it’s evident that she have a motor. You have to be a very skilled and conditioned athlete, like her. She is a superb scorer. It wasn’t; at least not in the first half, we generally attempt to give her a rest. Jordan received the foul, so it kind of pulled us out of our regular rotation and we were unable to accomplish that, according to WVU head coach Mark Kellogg.
She has previously done it. She also played forty in the Big 12 Tournament’s final game. She’s a fantastic scorer and is sufficiently conditioned to accomplish that. When she’s on the ground, all eyes are on her, which improves everything around her as well.\
Better balance, but work to do
WVU did not meet Kellogg’s objective of having four players score in double figures in every game. Kylee Blacksten scored ten points, and Jordan Harrison scored fifteen. For the sixth time this season, Blacksten—who scores six points a game on average—scored in double figures.
“She has been in this trend for several weeks. Her reaching double digits excites me. We discussed aiming for four figures, which we haven’t quite achieved, but achieving three relieves some of the pressure on Quinerly and Harrison, according to Kellogg.
Throughout the season, Kellogg has given Jayla Hemingway a lot of credit for her play. In the second and fourth quarters, Hemingway played more minutes while Harrison fouled out.
“I believed she stood up for
Every game, Princeton shoots 15 three-pointers on average. However, despite the Mountaineers’ best efforts to deny inside looks, the Tigers were only 6-of-21 from outside the arc against West Virginia. The first half saw WVU outrebound 23–12, but the Mountaineers prevailed 16–11 in the second half on the boards.
“It felt like they made two or three right away in the first quarter, and I was like, ‘Oh no, this is bad.'” Making teams more one-dimensional is, in my opinion, advantageous. Kellogg
stated.
“Therefore, I believe that the paint points swung pretty heavily in our favour. It was important to us that they not get paint touches if they were taking perimeter shots.”
Before every game, Kellogg provides us with goals to maintain a specific number of rebounds or points, according to Quinerly.
He simply instructed them to keep working when they received a few more rebounds than we had anticipated. I won’t disclose the exact number. Everyone who was there—Kylee, Danelle [Arigbabu], for example—fought on the boards and completed the tasks at hand.
“I believe the paint was packed well by them. I believe we
We may or may not have looked inside, but there was a lot of stuff there and it took some time for us to break through their push, so we were unable to set up our usual routines. Thus, West Virginia deserves praise.
costly excursions to the foul line
This season, the Mountaineers as a team shoot 70% from the free throw line. West Virginia only made 18 of 36 attempts from the stripe against Princeton. The Mountaineers need to beat that figure on Monday.
“We are more adept at making free throws than that team is.” Obviously, we’ll need to do better on Monday night. Yes, maybe we’ll have that fixed,” Kellogg replied.
Kellogg wins the Division I “Big Dance” for the first time.
Although Kellogg had won NCAA Tournaments while serving as head coach at West Texas A&M and Fort Lewis College, this Saturday’s victory marks his first in the Division I tournament.
Straight ahead to Iowa. Sadly, I won’t have much time to enjoy it. Yes, I’m not sure. I never saw it that way, said Kellogg, or that it was a burden on my shoulders.
“I’m eager to acquire it. I’ve played at SFA twice and was never able to close games despite having leads over Georgia Tech. You want to obtain the first one since it feels nice. If you don’t win one, you can’t go forward, but that’s what we want from our programme. We’re hoping to make the postseason.