Javon Small fights toward the basket against Iowa State.
MORGANTOWN — We are spoiled here in Morgantown.
We don’t act it and, on payday, you don’t see any long lines at the Mercedes-Benz dealership, but we are spoiled.
It kind of hit this weekend as first Steve Slaton, the football running back from Rich Rodriguez, Act I, was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and was driven home over the Saturday and Sunday as Jerry West was honored at both the men’s and women’s basketball victories.
Yeah, we know, in recent years we’ve sort of slipped as we adjusted to life in the Big 12 with football and basketball not owning a weekly address in the Top 25, but things are promising to be better and, as we move toward the return of great Mountaineer success, we get to enjoy two of the nation’s best basketball players in men’s guard Javon Small and women’s guard JJ Quinerly.
You can see it in the statistics, as noted here with the numbers on the two this season:
But it is more. They are the best of the Mountaineer players.
Talk is revving up that Small is an All-American, potentially the Big 12’s Player of the Year. Even his coach, Darian DeVries, is joining the flurry of high praise coming his way as he leads the Big 12 in scoring with 19.8 points a game.
“I wouldn’t trade him for anybody,” DeVries said after he scored 27, 12 of them in the last minute and a half in beating Iowa State. “I think he’s an elite-level competitor; an elite-level leader. He’s been just incredible all year.”
That was saying a mouthful but there was more. Much more.
“I think he’s the best guard in the country right now. For what we’re asking him to do, and the way that he put that team on his back late; I mean, he made just some big time plays. I don’t think people really appreciate when he’s getting that much focus and still getting free and making those types of plays. He’s something special and I hope people really enjoy the time they get to watch him here.”
His teammates offer not jealousy toward what he is accomplishing, but instead are in lockstep with their coach in such a belief.
During this Saturday’s post-game press conference, when DeVries made his statement, Small was asked about it. Before he could offer up an answer, center Eduardo Andre spoke up from next to him.
“He is Big 12 Player of the Year,” Andre broke in.”
“Yeah, come one now,” teammate Amani Hansberry, also sitting on stage, added.
It didn’t leave much for Small to say, but what he did finally come up with told a whole lot about him. It isn’t numbers or awards he’s out there playing for.
“I don’t ever think about it,” he said. “The only thing I’m worried about is winning at the end of the day. You can only win Big 12 Player of the Year if you win. I’ve never heard of a Big 12 Player of the Year tha lost, so the only thing we can do is keep winning.”
He drives the team because he is team driven.
Come crunch time he becomes Cap’n Crunch.
“Like a lot of great players — and it’s really fun being a coach of one of those — you can tell when they get into that zone,” DeVries said of his star.
“You could see it in his eyes. He wanted to take that game over. I’ve seen Javon in practice and in games, when he gets in a zone, he’s really good”
The same can be said of Quinerly on the women’s side. In many ways they are a lot alike, as players and as people.
Neither is boastful. Neither is a Quinn Slazinski or Erik Stevenson with a microphone in front of them. They are agreeable, if not necessarily quotable and they don’t often offer up views into their inner selves.
But put a ball in their hands and they change dramatically. They take over the game, dictate the pace, give all of what they have to win a single ball game … every time they step onto the court.
Small is finishing his career with one year at WVU after having played at East Carolina and Oklahoma State.
Quinerly’s story is different. She came here and in four years she played for three different coaches — Mike Carey, Dawn Plitzuweit and now Mark Kellogg. In an era where players move freely between schools, you seldom see a player hang around after a coaching change, but she found something at WVU that meant more than just coach and player.
“I would never say never, so I won’t say there will never be another time,” Kellogg said. “But will any player stay through three coaching changes? I don’t know about that. That would be different anywhere, not just here.”
But it was here that it happened. Why? Why would a player today do so?
In a recent story on winsidr.com, she explained why.
“I’m closer to home, and I always wanted my family to come to my games,” Quinerly said, being from Norfolk, Va. “The fanbase keeps me grounded. They see you at the grocery store, oit in the community. I always wanted to be at a school where I could make a name for myself and where I could help put that team on the map — that was a big, big thing for me.”
While Small has earned his spurs offensively, while never backing off defensively, Quinerly actually has been able to be an unmatched force on both sides of the ball at WVU.
Offensively, this past weekend, she moved past Meg Bulger and into 8th place of WVU’s all-time scoring list and has Meg’s sister Kate, currently sixth, within reach before long.
But she is also in position to own the school’s record for steals as she continued to make her presence felt in Kellogg’s devastating pressure defense.
That is what she really likes.
She was introduced to defense as a mere child.
“I would say as a kid like playing outside with my brothers usually, probably playing football so a lot of the time I was playing safety or DB or something, just learning those defensive instincts,” she said.
Offense, defense … makes no difference.
“I would say it depends on what’s needed at the moment,” she said when asked about it. “At the end of the day, I love defense, don’t get me wrong. I really love defense because my defense helps my offense for sure, but it definitely speaks to what’s going on in the situation.
“If we need a steal … all right. If we need a bucket, all right. I can get that. If we need a rebound, I can get that, so, yeah, tell me what to do and I will do it.”
She separates her on court and off court persona.
“As a person, I’m definitely family-oriented and very supportive of people. I care for people a lot, I’m very chilled and quiet. I wouldn’t just be the one in the room just talking. I’m probably going to be looking around, watching, listening and trying to read people and stuff like that,” she said.
What she does do is fit right in with what Kellogg is creating on the court, a nationally ranked team that may just be jelling as the right time and is hoping to get a strong seed in the NCAA Tournament and go further than last year, when they wound up playing Caitlin Clark and Iowa on the Hawkeyes home court and losing in the second round after pushing them to the limit.
