File photo No. 18 West Virginia hosts Big 12 Conference leader and 14th-ranked Kansas State at 2 p.m. today.

MORGANTOWN — One of the most popular halftime acts West Virginia basketball brings into the Coliseum in a normal year is a pair of fast-change artists who amaze fans with how quickly they go from one costume to another.

Well, West Virginia’s women’s basketball team will be feeling as though it is doing the same thing as it looks for its 15th consecutive home victory in a crucial Big 12 meeting with No. 14 and league-leading Kansas State just 48 hours after defeating Cincinnati, 69-50, on the same court Saturday afternoon.

It was a Senior Day victory with all the emotional trappings that Senior Days provide but it was hardly an impressive outing for the Mountaineers, who put their 20-5, 10-4 record up against K-State’s 23-3, 11-2 record in the President’s Day attraction.

“I kind of saw my dad wipe his eyes, and I was like ‘Ah, Lord.’ Other than that, it was cool,” said JJ Quinerly, who pushed the emotions aside to have one of her finest performances of an All-American career with 29 points.

That moved her into fifth place on WVU’s all-time scoring list, passing Teana Muldrow as she hit 11 of 22 shots.

“I haven’t really been seeing a lot of 3s fall this season,” Quinerly said. :I kind of have to step it up going into the postseason and everything else.”

In truth, coach Mark Kellogg wants to see a lot of improvement on his team as they head into this game that could put them into position to have a high finish in the conference, but he doesn’t believe they played that way against Cincinnati.

“We hung around defensively and did some decent stuff on that end (against Cincinnati) but I didn’t like us offensively,” he said. “We started OK, but it came to a screeching halt. They played a lot of zone and while we were prepared for that, we didn’t make many from the perimeter.

“Then you are just battling on defense. When you are not scoring, it’s hard to get your crowd into it. That’s typically how that works. I thought we got good looks but didn’t convert many of those in the first half and I thought we missed way too many layups.

“I was a little disappointed there but the late surge was good in the first half because they had taken the lead. The third quarter was good, I thought it looked a little more like us. We’ve got to keep battling on the defensive end and see if we can get more offensive flow and get more people involved.”

Part of the problem, Kellogg felt, came from it being Senior Night.

“I thought they handled it OK, but it’s Senior Night and emotional and you see red eyes out there when they’re doing it,” Kellogg said. “I thought once we got back in the locker room from the ceremony they were settled down and ready to go play.”

One area that Kellogg hopes to address is getting off to a faster start than WVU did against Cincinnati and has in a few games.

“Make some shots,” he offered up as the biggest correction that can be made. “That would be great. We’re battling defensively, but we’re so inconsistent on the offensive end. That’s the struggle most of the time.”

The defense often allows WVU to go on major runs in the course of a game, but that only comes if they take advantage of the turnovers they cause.

“We can go on 6, 7 or 8-0 runs, a lot of it comes from the turnovers we cause,” he said. “In the halfcourt we have to be a little bit better. We ran some good offense, but we have to convert. We had good looks. We chart good shots, bad shots and we had two shots that were in the red, like ‘Please, don’t ever take that shot again.’ But for the most part they were solid shots; we didn’t make them.”

Kellogg’s approach is to try and have his team play more controlled on offense.

“Slow your mind offensively so we can convert some of these open looks and layups,” he said. “Continue to take the right shots.”

That and keep up the defensive pressure they have come to be known for since Kellogg arrived last season.

“We can be elite defensively,” he said. “Now we have to find a way to be elite on the offensive side.”