Mar 25, 2025
West Virginia’s JJ Quinerly (11) attempts to shoot as North Carolina’s Lexi Donarski (20) defends during the second half in the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament in Chapel Hill, N.C., Monday, March 24, 2025.
MORGANTOWN — With the shrill shriek of a referee’s whistle reverberating in her ears; with the muffled clank of a basketball bouncing off the rim, JJ Quinerly’s storied career at West Virginia came to a storybook ending on Monday night in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Unfortunately, it was a horror story that had to come from the typewriter of Stephen King as the Mountaineers were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament, 58-47, by a North Carolina basketball team that received a 21-point performance from Alyssa Ustby to advance to the Sweet 16.
Quinerly spent her four years at WVU playing for three different coaches, winding up the third all-time leading scorer in the program’s history with 2,016 points. Unfortunately, only 8 of them came in this frustrating game in which she went just 2 for 12 shooting as she was handcuffed by an unrelentingly strong Tar Heels defense and by the foul police in striped shirts who managed to call three fouls on her within 10 seconds on the court in the second half.
So frustrated was she that very late in the game, as shots by her and her teammates went everywhere but in and when the endless tweets were from whistles, not social media post, she took her fist and slammed a bouncing basketball into the floor.
This game will never erase the legacy she left as she accomplished almost everything she set out to accomplish.
“I wanted to be remembered as one of best guards ever to play at WVU. I think I left like a legacy here and I left the program better than it was when I came in,” she said.
One cannot blame the officials for the 22 fouls they called on the Mountaineers, as they called 20 on Carolina, but it was how the fouls were distributed as they fouled out Kylee Blacksten and Jordan Thomas and put Quinerly on ice with her four fouls while not one Caroline player was ever in any real foul trouble, even though four of them wound up with three fouls.
“There wasn’t a lot of flow to that game. I don’t think it necessarily went our way. It was on someone else’s floor. I don’t think it had anything to do with the outcome,” Coach Mark Kellogg said..
For most of the game WVU threatened their own team record for fewest points in an NCAA tournament game, which was 43 scored against LSU in 2007. A late free throw and a last-second 3 from Sydney Shaw took the Mountaineers past the infamous record.
Shaw’s 3 also saved face for the Mountaineers as it was their second of the game in 21 tries, while an inglorious 9.5% performance from beyond the arc, it was better than the 8.3% they managed in that LSU game, which is 8.3%.
The Mountaineers also contributed to their own demise by turning the ball over 16 times, and one night after scoring 28 points off turnovers against Columbia they could get just 11 off 17 turnovers they forced from Carolina and 2 points the whole game on fast breaks.
“I thought it might be a game a little bit like that, to be honest,” Kellogg said. “It was two elite defensive teams. I thought it might be a little bit of a slugfest. I certainly thought we had a better offensive performance in us, and it wasn’t our night on the offensive end. Certainly they had a lot to do with that.
It was a dreadful performance from the onset as Quinerly missed her first two shots, didn’t get her first of two baskets in the game until 2:41 was left in the half and WVU fell behind, 6-0.
In a sloppy first quarter, they rallied for the final eight points to go into a 12-12 tie as the second quarter began.
It was little different in the second quarter as WVU managed just two baskets out of 11 shots but again somehow hung close, entering halftime down just 24-21.
Then, midway through the third quarter they caught fire and rushed to a 35-33 lead with 3:02 left in the half.
Was this spurt they had been waiting for?
Hardly.
North Carolina, with Utsey showing the way, scored 16 of the next 19 points with Quinerly on the bench trying to nurse her foul situation.
At that point North Carolina had an 11-point lead at 49-38 and the way WVU was shooting they could have played until next Monday without catching up.
“They scored 58 points. I don’t think it was our defense. It was our offense,” Kellogg said. “We shot 24 percent. What did we shoot, 24? We shot 24 percent and 9.5 percent from the 3. It’s going to be hard to win when you score 47 points.
“We can win games holding teams to 58. I thought our effort on the defensive end was really good,” the coach continued. “I thought we competed. I thought we held them down long enough to see if we could make a run. We never made any runs. I don’t know the kills and the stops, but when we hold somebody to 58, there’s going to be some pretty good defensive possessions.”
It was what has come to be a typical second round game in the NCAA Tournament for WVU, who now is 1-13 in second-round games.
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