Small, Quinerly headline WVU hoops showdowns

The message was presented without any frills.

“Player of the Year candidates” it read, quite simply.

Think about that for a moment. Within the hour Small, the driving force behind the strong start Darian DeVries has gotten off to in his first season as WVU men’s basketball coach, had been named to the final 10 candidates for the Bob Cousy Award, which honors the top men’s point guard in the nation, and to the mid-season 50-player watch list for the Oscar Robertson Award, presented to the top men’s player in college basketball.

And Quinerly, like Small, had been named to the 50-player midseason watch list for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Trophy presented to the nation’s top women’s player of the year in college basketball.

While this is important in signifying the progress that WVU is making in both of its key winter sports programs, it also brings to the forefront a significant situation in which Mountaineer basketball fans find themselves on Wednesday evening as both the men’s and women’s teams play.

The women have the Coliseum court to host Kansas in a 7 p.m. game while the men travel to TCU for a road game.

Do you take in the live action with the women at the Coliseum and watch Quinerly go on her nightly climb up the all-time scoring and steals lists among the women’s great players or do you sit there and watch on your computer or phone WVU’s men’s game on ESPN+ at 8 p.m.?

Both games are important. The WVU men come into the game with a 14-7 and 5-5 conference record. Being on the road was once a scary proposition, but WVU comes into the game off a win at Cincinnati and is 3-2 on the road this season after going 2-25 in road games the previous three seasons.

WVU also numbers among its road victories in its first-ever win at Allen Fieldhouse in Kansas.

Playing TCU has long been an interesting matchup because it used to put Bob Huggins face-to-face with Jamie Dixon, two men who once were centerpieces in the Backyard Brawl when Dixon was at Pitt and Huggins at his WVU alma mater. And Dixon faired well, owning a 19-16 advantage against WVU although he is 7-9 since coming to TCU.

Last year the Horned Frogs swept both games against the Mountaineers.

DeVries and Small have changed the direction of the WVU program and road wins will help WVU in its effort to return to the NCAA Tournament.

Small comes into the game as the Big 12’s scoring leader at 19 points a game but he has done it in a team framework.

“We just have to keep winning games and keep winning together,” Small said. “It’s a team effort at the end of the day. We just have to keep coming out here and play every single game like it’s our last.”

Meanwhile, at home, Quinerly brings a 19.2 scoring average into the 7 p.m. home game with Kansas, leading the Mountaineer women to a 17-4 record and a 7-4 conference mark. They go against a Jayhawk team that is 14-8 but 4-7 in conference play.

Quinerly is fifth in scoring in the conference and with her fourth point will have 1,751 for the season, tying Talisha Hargis for sixth place on the all-time list. She also has 300 career steals and needs 50 more to match Jenny Hillen for second place all-time as a Mountaineer.

She comes off a game in which she had 8 steals against Cincinnati.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” she admitted after the game, having stated that she came into the season wanting to become the program’s all-time steal leader. “I was thinking about a double-double, but it definitely wasn’t in getting double-digit steals.”

Defense has been the staple upon which the women’s team’s success is based. Using an aggressive press, Quinerly’s 69 steals leads five players on the roster with 38 or more steals in 20 games.

WVU’s pressure has forced 15 turnovers in every game this year, averaging 25.2 with a high of 44 for the season, leading to a frenetic pace in each game.

Teams just have trouble scoring against WVU, averaging 53.2 points per game, which is the lowest in the Big 12 and No. 6 in the nation.