MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (Nov. 5, 2024) – The West Virginia University women's basketball team opened the regular season with an 85-41 win over Towson on Tuesday evening inside the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown.
A trio of Mountaineer guards combined for 56 of the Mountaineers' points. Junior guard Jordan Harrison scored a WVU career-high 23 points, junior guard Sydney Shaw produced a career-high 19 points and senior guard JJ Quinerly rounded out the Mountaineers in double figures with 14 points.
The win is the 14th straight in the non-conference for the Mountaineers. WVU finished a perfect 11-0 in non-conference action last year.
Harrison filled the stat sheet adding eight assists and six steals. Shaw finished 7-of-9 from the floor and 5-of-6 from three while adding four assists. The guard trio finished the night 9 of 14 from beyond the arc.
Harrison had the hot hand for the Mountaineers to open the game, scoring seven of the Mountaineers opening points on a perfect 3-of-3 mark from the floor. Towson kept pace, leveling the score at 11 at the first media timeout. Freshman forward Jordan Thomas scored the Mountaineers' final three points of the quarter to take a 14-13 advantage after the opening 10 minutes.
Towson jumped out to an 18-16 lead early in the second before the first of three second-quarter threes from Shaw spurred a 13-2 run by the Mountaineers and their first double-digit lead of the contest. Towson cut the lead down to six points before Harrison took over. The Oklahoma City, Oklahoma native scored the final nine Mountaineer points to push the WVU lead to 38-25 at halftime. Harrison alone outscored the Tiger 9-2 over the final three minutes of the quarter.
WVU and Towson traded scores over the opening six minutes of play out of the break, to a 45-32 WVU advantage. West Virginia then found a rhythm from beyond the arc with back-to-back Shaw threes and a Celia Riviere bucket to spur on a 12-0 run and a 27-point WVU advantage. WVU pushed its lead to as many as 30 points in the final minute of the quarter before taking a 65-27 lead at the break.
The Mountaineers ran away with the game in the fourth, outscoring the Tigers 20-4, and increasing its lead to as many as 44 points. West Virginia outscored Towson 47-16 over the final 20 minutes.
WVU forced the Tigers into 32 turnovers and turned those miscues into 42 points. The Mountaineers held a 38-29 advantage on the glass and corralled 14 offensive rebounds. The effort on the boards resulted in 17 second-chance points.
The win marks the 11th straight season the Mountaineers have been victorious on opening night and is the 29th straight non-conference regular season home win dating back to the 2018-19 season.
Next up, West Virginia takes on Niagara on Saturday, Nov. 9, inside the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown. The Mountaineers and Purple Eagles are set to tip off at 2 p.m. ET.