WVU Women’s Basketball G JJ Quinerly Earns National Recognition

Junior guard JJ Quinerly has been a major catalyst for WVU Women’s Basketball this season, averaging 19.7 points, 3 assists and 3.2 steals per game—the last of which ranks as the ninth-best individual mark in the nation.

Her outstanding personal season is a big reason why the No. 24 Mountaineers currently hold the No. 4 seed in the Big 12 this year, and she received recognition for her efforts on Tuesday afternoon, when she was named to the U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Ann Meyers Drysdale National Player of the Year Award watchlist.

elite company 👀@Hoops11Jj has been named to the USBWA National Player of the Year Watch List! #HailWV pic.twitter.com/XKh1hsXZl8

— WVU Women's Basketball (@WVUWBB) February 27, 2024

Quinerly recently became the 28th player in WVU Women’s Basketball history to score 500 points in a season, as she recorded a career-best 33 in Saturday’s loss against Baylor. She also ranks in the Mountaineers’ all-time top ten for steals, and with up to two more years of eligibility left, is likely to vault further up that leaderboard. 

This marks the second award named after Meyers-Drysdale—the standout shooting guard who became the first high school student named a member of the U.S. national team and helped UCLA win a National Championship—that national writers have named Quinerly to a watch list for this season. The award for the best shooting guard of the year also bears Meyers-Drysdale’s name, and Quinerly earned a spot on that watch list back in January. 

She may face an uphill battle in winning the national player of the year award, with players like Iowa’s Caitlyn Clark to contend with. Quinerly is one of 40 players on this watch list. 

The Mountaineers currently sit at 22-5 on the season (11-5 Big 12), with a double bye in the conference tournament on the line when they go on the road to face Oklahoma State at 7:30 p.m. EST tonight.