MORGANTOWN — There is a dilemma that comes with J.J. Quinerly’s talent, one that hasn’t been forced upon the WVU women’s basketball star too often this season, but makes for interesting conversation when it does.
You could almost call it the Superman complex, in that the superhero has the power in the comic books to save the world, yet using that power only means chaos and havoc have broken out.
And so, we bring Quinerly into this story by bringing up last Saturday’s 77-62 upset loss against Arizona.
“I could see right after the ball was tipped off, they dang near hit just about every shot they put up,” Quinerly said Wednesday. “I kind of knew from then it was going to be a pretty long game with them.”
The Wildcats couldn’t miss. Quinerly’s teammates did plenty of it.
Superman had to be called into action.
It’s almost like a light switch being turned on, at least that’s how Quinerly explains it. As in, when all else is coming up short around her, Quinerly somehow flips that switch and attempts to put the No. 21 Mountaineers (16-4, 6-3 Big 12) on her shoulders.
“She certainly has the ability to do it,” WVU head coach Mark Kellogg said. “There are times when it’s not going very well and you go, ‘J.J., you better go and just take over.’ ”
In the later stages of that loss to the Wildcats, Quinerly simply kept forcing her way into the paint and the points piled up.
She finished with 26, and Quinerly enters Saturday’s home game against No. 24 Oklahoma State on a three-game stretch of scoring 20 or more points.
Just two points against Oklahoma State will move Quinerly into seventh place on the school’s all-time scoring list. If she scores 20, Quinerly will also move into sixth place.
“I’m the leader of this team. I’m the scorer of this team,” she said. “There is going to be a point in some games where I have to go and get buckets.”
The tricky part is what does that point of the game look like? If it’s WVU trying to hold onto a lead, then Quinerly’s play is likely complimentary to go along with two or three other teammates having good games, too.
“We need a third and a fourth scorer,” Kellogg said. “If we can get to four scorers, we typically have a pretty good chance of winning every game.”
The flip side, “If we only have one or two and J.J. has to take on everything on her own, we probably won’t succeed as much,” Kellogg said. “You look at our losses, we got maybe one or two.”
And so, the question is asked of Quinerly how she handles the dilemma. Sure, she could go out and score 25 every game and force up tough shots.
That would, obviously, lead to a lot of individual accolades.
Quinerly isn’t all that interested in those. She’d rather have the wins.
That takes another type of play, maybe even packing away the cape in order to boost the play of her teammates.
“That’s something me and coach Kellogg have talked about,” Quinerly said. “I have to find a balance in getting my teammates involved and making winning plays and then just going and getting a bucket.
“We all know I can score, but there’s points in the game where my team has to get involved. I’m going to need them throughout the whole year. We have to figure out a way to get everyone going.”
Kellogg’s version of that conversation went exactly the same way.
“It doesn’t always have to be scoring. That’s a challenge with her, too,” he said. “She takes a pull-up over three people, but maybe we should have dropped that one off, even though she has the ability to score over three people.”
