CHAPEL HILL, NC – On a night when the West Virginia women’s basketball team’s trademark defense lived up to the hype, North Carolina came to play in even more impressive fashion, holding the Mountaineers to their lowest offensive output of the season and knocking them out of the NCAA tournament in the round of 32, 58-47.
Tar Heel head coach Courtney Banghart knew she had a team capable of putting on that kind of performance.
“I was tired of hearing about their defense and not because it’s not one of the best defenses in the country,” Banghart said, “But why was nobody talking about our defense? These guys can defend. They’ve done it all year long.”
The Tar Heels capitalized on a slow offensive start from WVU, opening the game with a 12-4 run as it took more than three minutes for the sixth-seeded Mountaineers to get on the board. For a West Virginia team that thrives on forcing turnovers, it was their own inability to take care of the ball that gave their opponents continued opportunities in the opening ten minutes.
The tide turned late in the first with Sydney Shaw and JJ Quinerly notching their first field goals before Jordan Thomas scored the last four points of the quarter to tie the game at 12. The momentum of that 8-0 run carried over into the second quarter with Jordan Harrison sinking a three on WVU’s first possession to take the lead, 15-12.
UNC’s response came quickly when Lexi Donarski knocked down a midrange jumper to put her team back ahead, 19-18. That helped spark a 7-2 run that put the Tar Heels up by five in the final moments of the first half but once again, West Virginia came up with a response.
Sydney Shaw was fouled while shooting a three-pointer with less than ten seconds remaining and sank all three free throws to make it a 24-21 game at the half.
The swarming North Carolina defense held WVU to just nine points in the second quarter and a layup by Kylee Blacksten was the lone Mountaineer field goal that came between Harrison’s triple and the end of the half. Quinerly, West Virginia’s leading scorer on the season, was held to just 1 of 8 shooting and turned the ball over five times in the first 20 minutes while UNC attacked inside the arc, shooting 58% from two.
Foul trouble began to plague West Virginia to open the third as Quinerly picked up a pair of whistles, the second of which sent Donarski to the line. She made both to put the Tar Heels ahead by seven and a few minutes later Quinerly picked up her fourth foul, forcing her to spend a significant portion of the second half on the bench.
Needing answers, Kyah Watson stepped up for the Mountaineers as her layup midway through the quarter trimmed the deficit to four.
She followed that with a steal in the open floor before pulling down an offensive rebound and drawing a foul on the follow-up. By splitting the free throws, she cut the UNC lead to a single possession at 33-30.
In her final game as a Mountaineer, Watson scored nine points and secured 15 rebounds in the kind of performance that her head coach grew accustomed to over the last two seasons.
“I’ve routinely called her the glue of our team. She’s the kid I have the hardest time taking off the floor because she does so much for us and it’s not always scoring with Kyah,” he said.
Harrison scored the next three with a free throw and a floater in the lane to tie the game before Sydney Woodley took a hit on her way to the hoop and made both foul shots to put West Virginia ahead.
After a jumper by Reniya Kelly tied the game at 35, Donarski buried a shot from behind the arc that gave North Carolina a lead it never relinquished. The Tar Heels closed the third on a 15-3 run that started with the bucket by Kelly and closed with an Indya Nivar layup at the horn to make it a 45-38 game going into the final frame.
Opening the fourth, Alyssa Ustby’s ability to attack the paint caused big problems for West Virginia as the senior forward repeatedly slashed toward the basket before drawing a foul on Blacksten that sent WVU’s starting center out with her fifth foul and put UNC in the bonus with 8:14 to play in the game.
Ustby scored a game-high 21 points and added seven rebounds in her final game at Carmichael Arena.
“That was the matchup problem. What’d we have, one possession, was there four fouls on her on the inbound and we had three or four different people trying to defend her,” Kellogg said.
She converted both foul shots and 17 seconds later scored in transition to give her team the game’s first double-digit lead, 49-38. Quinerly scored four of the next six points at the free throw line to bring the deficit down to nine but Kelly knocked down a shot on the other end and the Mountaineers were never able to draw closer.
A Shaw triple in the final 40 seconds proved to be WVU’s final points of the season as the Tar Heels punched their ticket to the Sweet Sixteen and a meeting with Tobacco Road rival Duke on Friday.
Kellogg felt his team’s defensive effort gave it a chance to win but the offensive struggles proved too much to overcome.
“We can win games holding teams to 58 so I thought our effort on the defensive end was really good. I thought we competed. I thought we held them down long enough to see if we could make a run but we never made any runs,” he said.
The North Carolina defense took away any sense of efficiency from the Mountaineer offense as WVU shot just 24% from the field and made two of 21 three-pointers.
Donarski and Kelly both joined Ustby in double figures with 11 points while Harrison’s 10 points led West Virginia. She and Quinerly combined to shoot 4 of 21 from the field as WVU’s leading scorer was held to eight points in her final collegiate game.
“We really thought they were going to work really hard to limit Jordan and JJ touches in the paint. They have bigger bodies. They were going to take up a little more space,” Kellogg said.
While the result of the night proved disappointing, it put a bow on a record-setting season for the Mountaineer program and a record-setting career for Quinerly. Kellogg pointed to the importance of the departing senior class that has led the program to 25 wins in each of his first two seasons, a program first.
“A really close group, that’s what I’ve enjoyed most about my first two years here so far is it’s a really easy team to coach. They’re just really good kids. They do the right things. They work hard,” he said, “It’s fun to show up to work every day when you have a staff and a team like we have over the last couple of years.”
Quinerly walks away as one of the most decorated players in program history. The Norfolk, Va. native finishes her career as West Virginia’s third all-time leading scorer and a nominee for the Naismith National Defensive Player of the Year.
“I hope to be remembered as probably one of the best guards to ever play at West Virginia University. I think I did a lot under a lot of different coaches and honestly like you said I think I left a legacy here and left the program better than it was when I first came in,” she said.
Despite playing for three coaches in four years, her commitment to the West Virginia program never wavered. She says it’s been the teammates she played with and her desire to make her mark on the program kept her in Morgantown
“I could’ve left probably any time and my career and could’ve went probably anywhere in the country and I chose to stay in West Virginia just to make that legacy,” she said.
WVU will have to move forward without the senior class that Kellogg praised so heavily as Quinerly, Watson, Blacksten, Tirzah Moore, Danelle Arigbabu, and Zya Nugent suited up for the final time against the Tar Heels.
After his first two seasons came to an end in the round of 32, Kellogg knows what the next steps for his program are.
“I think we’re close. We’re closer now than we were a year ago,” he said, “I keep saying every time that I get into this game though is that the advantage of playing at home is significant and if that’s the rules of the NCAA then we need to keep working really, really hard to see if we can’t get one of these in Morgantown because I think that environment would be ridiculously off the charts.”