MORGANTOWN — As JJ Quinerly entered the interview room in the West Virginia University Basketball Practice Facility, the Mountaineers’ historian and author, John Antonik, who has a new book coming out any day now, asked if she could possibly touch his hands.

His reasoning was that as hot as her hand has been in the WVU team’s last two games, wins over Utah and Cincinnati, scoring 38 and 31 points in consecutive games to finish the regular season at 23-6 and the Big 12 Conference at 13-5 to earn the No. 4 seed and two-game bye in the conference tournament, it would warm up his frigid fingers on a day that had not yet reached freezing.

She declined.

“No, I’ve got to keep those warm for Friday,” she smiled.

Ah, Friday, the first game WVU will play, probably against Kansas State if they can avoid a second-round upset, and if she can keep them hot enough to continue on the streak she’s on they may just send those hands to the College Basketball Hall of Fame when she’s through using them.

She admits, she doesn’t know why or how this hot streak came over her — not that she was slacking any as she averaged better than 19 points a game entering the final two games — but she didn’t want to do anything to mess with it.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “The basket just looks a little wide right about now and I’m just glad to see the ball going in.”

Greatness is a fickle playmate for athletes. Many of them come with skills that can be lifted to the point that they reach greatness, but it also can come and go without warning.

Quinerly, who has flirted with such greatness throughout a four-year career that has spanned three coaches at WVU, understands this.

“At this moment right now I’m just staying in the moment, trying to have fun with my team and enjoy the game. As long as it lasts, I’m just going to have fun out there enjoying what I’m doing,” she said.

We’ve all felt in our way what it’s like. You know, “this is my lucky day.” Look down and there’s a dollar bill at your feet or you go into a drive thru window at a fast food joint and as you are handed your food the server tells you there’s no charge because the friendly person in front of you paid for it.

But in sports, where you have to practice so long and so hard to do something that looks so easy when it’s going right, there is that extra sense of accomplishment that comes with it. Every time you shoot there are two things that can happen, it can go in or miss.

When something like this comes along, though, it erases that second option.

“Honestly, I’m just feeling good,” she said. “It’s just going in. I’m having fun, smiling on the court, my team looks like it’s having fun out there. Seeing everyone smiling, gelling is great.”

Nothing bothers you when a hot streak comes. In baseball you hit a routine ground ball to short and it hits a rock and bounces over the shortstop’s head for a hit. In football you reach up for a pass with one hand and the ball settles in there softly for a catch, your feet just in bounds.

In basketball, shots that can go round and fall out now have no chance of coming out. You toss one up offline but it careens in off the backboard.

But mostly you don’t have to look at all. You hear it swish.

It’s as if you are alone on the court.

“Sometimes I get like that in a lot of games,” Quinerly said. “I try to wean out the noise.”

There’s a difference that you can feel from when you are hot or not.

“I would say at the beginning of the year I wasn’t shooting the ball as well as I am right now,” she explained. “I’d say the difference is mental. I think confidence is a big part of basketball or any sport. If you go out with a lot of confidence, you become that skill player.”

Her coach, Mark Kellogg, knows what his star player is all about and understands that she has put it all together at just the right time.

“We know she’s been capable of this. To put back-to-back games together is really special right now” he said. “Seniors start to look at things a little differently as their season goes on. They realize the days are numbered; the games are numbered.

“When she scored 38 at home, I don’t think she set out to do anything special. She just took what they gave her. Same thing at Cincinnati. They were playing a lot of zone and she was finding gaps and creases. I think our girls know she’s in that proverbial zone so they let her keep going while she is.

“When it’s time to move it and share it, she’s been able to do that. She finished with 7 assists in that 31-point game against Cincinnati … and 7 rebounds. As happy as I was with 31 points, I think I was just as happy with those other numbers.”

As a senior, the importance grows. Time is becoming short and now it’s one and done.

“After that TCU game (in which she hit 5 of 18 shots and scored 13 points in a 21-point loss), I was like, ‘Yeah we got to lock back in.'”

She locked in like a Yale lock and suddenly was beginning to feel the way Caitlin Clark felt all of last season, even as she struggled through a second-round NCAA meeting with WVU before getting hot late and winning the game for Iowa.

“She’s a different player, probably the greatest player in the world right now,” Quinerly said. “I wouldn’t even know how she feels.”