No. 16 West Virginia closes with six straight points to edge No. 20 Kansas State, 73-69 – WV MetroNews

No. 16 West Virginia scored the final six points Friday against 20th-ranked Kansas State to earn a 73-69 victory and extend its stay at the Big 12 Championship in Kansas City.

The fourth-seeded Mountaineers trailed by two points with 1:53 remaining after the fifth-seeded Wildcats got a go-ahead second-chance basket from Kennedy Taylor.

Jordan Thomas countered with a tying bucket, though she missed the ensuing free throw that would’ve given WVU (24-6) the lead with 1:21 remaining.

JJ Quinerly then came up with a steal and drained a pull-up jumper with 45 seconds left to put the Mountaineers in front, and after Temira Poindexter missed a clean look at a go-ahead three-pointer from off the wing, WVU’s Sydney Shaw made two free throws with 11 seconds remaining to make it a two-possession game and provide the final margin. 

Kansas State (26-7) made 13-of-15 first-quarter field-goal attempts to build a 33-23 lead. Were it not for the Mountaineers making 7-of-10 shots themselves, the deficit could’ve been far greater.

“When things didn’t go our way, I was most proud that we weathered the storm and that was certainly a storm that they came out with and we couldn’t get the game slowed down,” WVU head coach Mark Kellogg said. “After the first quarter, they only scored 34 from that point on. We let our defense come through, which is what we’ve done all year.”

WVU’s deficit was 44-36 at halftime, before the Mountaineers used an 8-2 spurt over a span of 3:07 late in the third quarter to go in front 54-53 for their first lead since 5-4.

That stretch featured triples from Jordan Harrison and Shaw as well as Harrison’s second-chance bucket for the lead at the 1:10 mark of the frame.

Poindexter banked in a trey just before time expired in the third to give KSU a 58-56 lead through three.

Early in the fourth quarter, Harrison scored six points in 38 seconds on a trey and conventional three-point play, leaving the Mountaineers with a 64-60 lead with 7:02 remaining.

WVU then went more than 5 minutes without a field goal until Thomas’ tying bucket.

Quinerly led all players with 24 points. Harrison scored 19 and Shaw added 13 with three steals. All but two of Harrison’s points came over the final two quarters.

“My three kind of got me going a little bit,” Harrison said. “They started going under the screen, so seeing some threes going in, the basket started getting big and then I went back to what I do, which is getting to the basket.”

The result gives West Virginia its second NCAA Quad 1 win this season. 

“We all just kind of stayed together. That’s a big part of us,” Quinerly said. “We’re going to stay together no matter what and we somehow came out with that win.”

The Mountaineers likely need at least one more victory, if not two and a conference championship, to have a realistic chance at being a top 16 team and hosting in the NCAA Tournament.

The Mountaineers await the winner of top seed and eighth-ranked TCU and No. 9 seed Colorado in Saturday’s semifinal at 4 p.m.

Taylor led KSU with 21 points and Poindexter scored 16 in defeat.