MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Through the first two games of the season, WVU head coach Mark Kellogg is still waiting to see his team’s best performance for 40 minutes. Despite uneven play in stretches, the Mountaineers slowly pulled away from George Washington, 78-66 in WVU’s second victory in three days against an Atlantic 10 opponent.
No. 24 West Virginia defeated Rhode Island, 68-64 on Tuesday.
“That was good for us to go against that. I didn’t love the first quarter again,” Kellogg said. “I thought we got better, kind of as the game went on. I thought we had an opportunity to kind of blow it open in the fourth and didn’t do it. I still think we are kind of missing those opportunities.”
Trailing 16-14 after the first quarter, WVU used an 8-0 run in the second to take a lead they would never relinquish. The run was capped by a 3-pointer from Wheeling Park graduate Alexis Bordas. Playing in her first game as a Mountaineer, Bordas scored 7 points in 17 minutes on the floor. She added two steals and two assists. Bordas did not play due to injury on Tuesday against URI.
“She rolled her ankle the day before our game the other day. She wanted to play and she worked herself into talking the trainer into probably even letting her suit up. I don’t know that I felt a hundred percent comfortable putting her out there. There’s a lot of [players] I want to see with Lex being one of those. I want to see her in the moment and see what it looks like.”
WVU led 37-31 at halftime and the Mountaineers built their largest lead of the game [51-37] midway through the third quarter with a 9-0 run. Skylar Forbes had the last five points in the run. She tied a career-high with 26 points on 6-of-10 shooting from beyond the arc.
“I don’t think I really realized I had it until probably at the end of the game,” Forbes said. “But a lot of it goes to my teammates for finding me on the pops. I wouldn’t have gotten to that without them.”
GW (1-1) pulled within six points [64-58] with 5:47 left, but the Revolutionaries could not draw any closer.
ZaZa Walton scored 17 points for WVU (2-0) while Divine Tumba had 15 points and a team-best nine rebounds.
West Virginia went 12-of-33 from the floor in the first half before knocking down 15-of-26 shots after intermission.
“We’re going too fast. Some of it is shot quality,” Kellogg said. “We were a little better tonight than I thought. But we still took a couple, more than that, probably four to six or seven that we shouldn’t even have taken.”
“I think there’s time where our opponents are a little tougher than us,” Forbes said. “So to that, just being tougher and staying rooted in our fundamentals and our standards.”
Alicia Newell led GW with 19 points and 11 rebounds. Gabby Reynolds added 18 points for the visitors.
West Virginia will play their third game in six days Sunday when the Mountaineers visit Georgia Tech for a 2 p.m. tip.
“We’re playing a quality opponent that is well-coached,” Kellogg said. “They’ll be ready for us and we need to go test ourselves. That’s what we’ve done with this team.”