KANSAS CITY – JJ Quinerly is playing the best basketball of her career at the right time of the year for 16^th-ranked West Virginia.
 
The senior scored a game-high 24 points, including the go-ahead jumper with 45 seconds left, to rally her Mountaineers to a 73-69 come-from-behind victory over 20^th-ranked Kansas State in the first quarterfinal round game of the Big 12 Tournament at the T-Mobile Center here in Kansas City this afternoon.
 
West Virginia trailed Kansas State 33-23 after a first quarter in which the Wildcats made 13 of their 15 shot attempts.
 
"I think, first, really, really proud of our basketball team and the adversity we faced in that first quarter," West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg said afterward. "That was an onslaught of threes and offensive scoring at its finest for Kansas State.
 
"After the first quarter when we gave up 33 points, I think they only scored 34 from that point on. And we let our defense come through, which is what we have done all year. And to the kids' credit, JJ got us going offensively, as she's been in that little zone here lately," he said.
 
Quinerly, now 39 points shy of becoming just the fourth 2,000-point scorer in school history, has tallied 29, 26, 38, 31 and 24 points in five out of her last six outings.
 
She has boosted her season scoring average to 20.6 points per game, and Kellogg is going to ride his star player right into the NCAA Tournament.
 
"We all stayed together," Quinerly said. "I think that's a big part of us. We're going to stay together no matter what, and we somehow came out with that win."
 
As things stand right now, West Virginia is comfortably in the Big Dance, but the question becomes do they have a resume good enough to get a couple of first-weekend home games at the WVU Coliseum?
 
ESPN.com had West Virginia (24-6) as a six-seed in its latest Bracketology before today's action, and this afternoon's win over projected four-seed Kansas State should give it a boost, even without its star player Ayoka Lee.
 
"That was an NCAA Tournament game, and not a first-round game either," Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie said afterward. "It was a deep NCAA Tournament game. (West Virginia has) got a really good team."
 
Indeed, it does.
 
And the Mountaineers are a great team at the WVU Coliseum.
 
"Against West Virginia, it's not always about what you want to do; it's what you want to stay away from," Mittie noted.

With eighth-ranked TCU hanging on to defeat Colorado in this afternoon's second quarterfinal game, as expected, that sets up a rematch of the game played in Fort Worth a couple of weeks ago.
 
That was Quinerly's only off-night during her recent torrid stretch and was one of her poorest shooting efforts of the year.
 
Getting another crack at TCU's outstanding guard Hailey Van Lith on a neutral floor on Saturday afternoon is a great opportunity for Quinerly.
 
It is also a great opportunity for a WVU team that has been unbeatable at home this year, but just 8-6 away from the Coliseum.
 
In getting its second victory over Kansas State in a span of three weeks, West Virginia probably played its best game away from Morgantown this season on a neutral floor, although it was basically a home game for Kansas State today without it being at Bramlage Coliseum.
 
At the very least, the victory inches WVU a little closer toward the possibility of hosting NCAA Tournament games at the WVU Coliseum for the first time since 1992, which just happens to be the only time the Mountaineers have ever reached the round of 16.
 
Last year, we saw firsthand what a tremendous home court advantage can mean for the home team when WVU lost 64-54 at second-ranked Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
 
For West Virginia to get NCAA games in Morgantown in a couple of weeks, obviously plenty of work still needs to be done.
 
But wouldn't it be awesome to see one of the greatest players in school history play once more in Morgantown?
 
Some teams slotted ahead of the Mountaineers have already gone down in their conference tournaments. Alabama and Tennessee were upset in the SEC Tournament on Thursday. Oklahoma knocked off 12^th-ranked Kentucky and Michigan routed 15^th-ranked Maryland in conference tournament action this afternoon.
 
Seventh-ranked N.C. State and 14^th-ranked North Carolina narrowly avoided upsets today.
 
Louisville-Duke and Iowa-Ohio State are two more games to keep an eye on tonight.
 
"Find a way and advance and keep playing as long as we can in this tournament," Kellogg said.
 
Keep playing, and winning, and let's see what happens.
 
Saturday's semifinal game against the Horned Frogs will be televised on ESPN+ at 4 p.m.