MORGANTOWN — To this day, J.J. Quinerly isn’t quite sure what happened to her that one game in Puerto Rico.
It was certainly an unQuinerly-like performance that day in San Juan against Charlotte, as her two points, one technical foul and fouling out would attest.
“In Puerto Rico, I got a little frustrated against Charlotte,” Quinerly said. “That was my first-ever technical in my career. I’ve come back since that everything is mental. You have to play the mental game and I had to let my teammates help me out.”
Since then Quinerly has been on a tear, one that led to a nearly historic moment Sunday, in the Mountaineers’ 107-43 victory against Delaware State inside the Coliseum.
The junior guard scored 25 points on 9 of 13 shooting, while adding a career-high 12 assists.
She finished with eight rebounds, two shy of making her just the fourth women’s player in school history to record a triple-double.
“My teammates were saying something to me on the bench, ‘You need two more rebounds.’ I was like, oh Lord,” Quinerly said. “I didn’t get those two rebounds, but my teammates were keeping up with it.”
For added measure, Quinerly had seven steals. No WVU player — man or woman — has ever had a quadruple-double. WVU head coach Mark Kellogg subbed for her early in the fourth quarter.
“I knew in the back of my mind where she was, statistically speaking, but very rarely will I play to the statistics,” Kellogg said. “I told her I was going to give her two to three minutes (in the fourth quarter) and then she was going to come out regardless.”
As for the tear Quinerly has been on, she’s scored at least 21 points in each of the last four games, shooting at a 56% rate during that time.
She had 13 points in the first quarter alone against the Hornets (2-7), who were held to seven over the first 10 minutes.
“She can do it all when she wants to,” Kellogg said. “She was pretty complete tonight.”
WVU (9-0) finished that first quarter with more steals (nine) than Delaware State had points, which is really all you need to know on how this game got out of hand so quickly.
Still, WVU set a season high with 30 assists and forward Kylee Blacksten had her best game of the season with 16 points, five rebounds and four assists.
It was the most points the Mountaineers have scored in a single game since Dec. 17, 2016, when WVU also scored 107 against Longwood.
“Pretty solid effort tonight, for the most part,” Kellogg said. “It was a great start to the game. The turnovers were high in the first quarter, so we were able to go out and get some easy buckets. We wanted to come out and punch first.”
Jordan Harrison added 13 points and six assists, while Jayla Hemingway, Tavy Diggs and Tirzah Moore all came off WVU’s bench to score 10 points.
