WVU’s JJ Quinerly Named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year

WVU Women’s Basketball guard JJ Quinerly continues to rack up awards for her standout season in gold and blue, as the Big 12 Conference named her their Defensive Player of the Year on Tuesday.

She’s the first Mountaineer to win the award since West Virginia joined the Big 12 ahead of the 2012-2013 academic year.

Quinerly helped key head coach Mark Kellogg’s aggressive full court press defense, and her 3.03 steals per game were good for 12th in the nation—although she’d been much higher on the list before a series of injuries forced her to exit contests early over the past month of the season.

The junior guard’s 222 steals currently rank No. 9 in Mountaineers’ history, and her 88 this season are good for ninth. Although Quinerly left the Mountaineers’ regular season finale with a knee injury, currently listed as day-to-day, she will probably move up the list in both categories before the season ends, with a likely NCAA Tournament berth awaiting WVU Women’s Basketball.

While the Defensive Player of the Year award is the first trophy that JJ Quinerly will officially take home, she’s in the running for a number of other prestigious honors, including the Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year Award, for which she recently became a Top 5 finalist. She also made the Top 40 for the U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s National Player of the Year Award, also named for Meyers Drysdale.