MORGANTOWN — In front of its second-largest home crowd of the season, the West Virginia women’s basketball team avenged a loss from earlier this month with a tough, grind-it-out win over visiting Iowa State Saturday afternoon in the Coliseum.
It came 17 days after the Cyclones (12-7, 6-3 Big 12) mounted a 19-point second-half comeback to beat the No. 24 Mountaineers (17-2, 6-2) in Ames on Jan. 10.
It took a career night from standout JJ Quinerly, who finished with a career-high 31 points, and a big fourth quarter from unsung hero Dannelle Arigbabu to get the 84-78 victory.
“Quinerly was special,” WVU coach Mark Kellogg said. “It was a career night for her and she just kind of did what JJ does.”
Quinerly scored 22 of her 31 points after halftime while also pulling down six rebounds, dishing out three assists and grabbing five steals.
Quinerly only had nine points at halftime and 18 after three quarters, but powered the Mountaineers to victory with 13 in the fourth. Kellogg said he was a little surprised to see she finished with 31.
“I don’t know if there such a thing as a quiet 31 by any stretch,” Kellogg said. “I knew she was having a good night, I did not know she had 31 though.”
Quinerly said it was her defense that finally got her into a rhythm offensively.
“I love defense, defense can turn into offense,” she said. “Those easy points I can get off of a steal, just seeing the ball go in the hoop can get me into a rhythm to hit threes, jumpers, all that.”
Iowa State, too, got a standout performance as freshman forward Audi Crooks finished with 25 points and 16 rebounds. Crooks’ size proved to be a matchup nightmare for the Mountaineers. Even though WVU forward Kylee Blacksten was having a good game — she finished with 14 points — she offered little resistance against Crooks.
“It’s a mismatch both ways,” Kellogg said. “Kylee’s a mismatch for Crooks and she’s a mismatch for Kylee. We’re asking her to defend a kid that she probably shouldn’t be trying to defend.”
Things came to a head in the second quarter when WVU focused so much on providing help defense on Crooks in the paint, ISU’s shooters were left open to make five three-pointers in the frame.
“We had to take something away, the paint or the three and I don’t think we took either away,” Kellogg said. “We made some adjustments in the second half that cleaned that up a little bit.”
In contrast to what happened in Ames, neither team was able to build even a double-digit lead in Morgantown Saturday. The back-and-forth contest flipped when Jordan Harrison hit back-to-back three-pointers that gave WVU the biggest lead of the game, nine points, with 6:41 left to play.
Iowa State’s offense, which had run through Crooks all game, mustered one final barrage, a 7-0 run, but only made one field goal over the final four minutes.
“They’re so good at the initial points of the press,” ISU coach Bill Fennelly said. “Then what happens when you do beat it, they speed you up and you might miss a shot or make a bad decision. It’s a very hard defense to play against and to prepare for. I’m glad we’re done with them.”
A large part of that was Arigbabu, who has the size to match up with Crooks and spent nearly the entire fourth quarter guarding her.
“It makes Crooks have to work that much harder when you can put Danelle in there,” Kellogg said. “She still found 25 and 16, but it made her life a little bit more difficult.”
“It was huge, it was huge minutes,” Blacksten said of Arugbabu’s contributions. “She did everything that she was supposed to do. She gave our team that little bit of a boost in the fourth quarter that we really needed.”
WVU also got a late-game boost from the crowd of 4,905 fans in attendance.
“I thought the crowd was phenomenal,” Kellogg said. “I thought we needed that. That was fun and we heard them. Heard them on defense, heard them when we scored, heard them on the officials so it was a little bit of everything.”
The crowd erupted late in the third quarter when Lauren Fields hit a three-point that gave WVU a 60-57 lead, a lead that would last the rest of the game.
“The crowd was a big part of the game today,” Quinerly said. “I love the crowd, they were very loud, hyped up with a lot of energy. It was great out there.”
Fields tied Blaksten with 14 points to finish second on the team. Harrison finished with 13.
WVU got out-rebounded 36-27 but made up for it by forcing 24 Iowa State turnovers.
“I think the challenge is we probably had four or five ‘pick-sixes,’” Fennelly said of times when WVU would turn a steal into a quick score. “Those are the ones I don’t think defensive rebounding makes up for.”
Behind Crooks’ 25 points, Jalynn Bristow scored 12 for the Cyclones.
WVU stays at home to host UCF on Tuesday.
