WVU’s JJ Quinnerly drives to the basket Friday afternoon against Arizona. The Mountaineers lost.

MORGANTOWN — And then there have been none …

West Virginia’s women’s basketball group was eliminated from the NCAA Championships in the initial round Thursday in College Park, Md., just as the men’s group was a day earlier in Birmingham, Ala.

The ladies, carrying a No. ten seed, ran into an Arizona group, seeded 7th, that just had a small bit also a lot in all places and place with each other a powerful second-half to claim a 75-62 victory that likely defined the variations among the two teams.

“I believed our young ladies battled,” Coach Dawn Plitzuweit stated. “We began down in the initial quarter, sort of dug ourselves a hole. I believed our resilience and our toughness sort of showed via. I believed we continued to operate, to attack.”

The Mountaineers got scuffed about in the initial quarter, providing up 28 points, which was a season-higher for the 24th ranked Wildcats, falling behind 28-17.

“They seriously pushed the ball in transition. We had a difficult time acquiring back and stopping the ball. We fouled a lot in the initial quarter,” senior guard Madisen Smith, possessing played her final game at WVU following a profession that place her amongst the greatest to play at the college.

Recovering its composure in the second quarter, the Mountaineers narrowed the halftime deficit to 40-35 and turned the game in their favor and created a powerful run at Arizona to narrow the distinction to 50-47.

The Wildcats, on the other hand, did not panic, even although they have been without having their greatest player, Shaina Pellington, and basically started pounding the ball inside exactly where Cate Reese could compile a game-top 25 points and exactly where WVU’s former teammate, Esmery Martinez, would carve a double-double out of 13 points and a dozen rebounds.

“It was cool to play against her. Fantastic to see her once more. She’s a good player,” Smith stated.

“For me, it wasn’t also weird. I only played with her for a year. I imply, I’m cool with her. We was laughing and joking on the court,” WVU’s JJ Quinerly, who completed the higher scorer with 19 points. “Just an additional player, just an additional game..

Quinerly, it turned out, was the only offense WVU had following they drew to inside 3 points. She scored 12 of her 19 points in the second half. At one particular point she scored 11 of the 13 points could muster at that time.

Arizona’s ball handling, it had 19 assists on 30 baskets, and its rebounding, hauling down 49 rebounds to just 35 for the Mountaineers, permitted the Wildcats to handle almost everything about the game.

WVU’s inability to do something on its offensive glass was crushing as it had only three second-possibility points.

Quinerly would not pin that on a size distinction, although.

“I do not assume it was their size,” she stated, “I cannot seriously say it hurt us. A lot more that we could have just did superior. We could have did superior just maintaining them off the boards, almost everything, so…”

So, it ended badly. WVU completed with a 19-12 record, likely reaching much more that was anticipated in a transition year.

“I told our players in the locker area I do not assume a lot of men and women, when this entire issue began much less than a year ago, would have stated that our young ladies would have had a possibility to be battling and have a possibility to do the factors that we’ve completed this year,” Plitzuweit stated.

Just before the game, Plitzuweit says she shared a story with her group that went along with this season.

“I’m not a really fantastic golfer, suitable? When golf balls have been invented, they have been smooth. There weren’t dents or dimples in them. As quickly as they’d get hit by a golf club, they realized the much more density they had in the golf ball, the farther it would go,” she started.

“That was sort of like us through the course of our time developing, there was a lot of adversity, a lot of studying.

“When there’s a transition, it is difficult,” she continued. “Our young ladies had to find out a new program, a new style, all these form of factors. We weren’t as thriving as we wanted to be early on.

We continued to battle, develop, place some dents in the golf ball, if you will. It kept going additional. When we completed, I believed our young ladies seriously battled and continued to get superior as the season wore on.”

That is just her way of searching toward subsequent year, as if standing on the tee and shouting “Fore!”

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