No. 25 West Virginia didn’t play with its food Friday night and rolled Mercyhurst, scoring its most points this season. 

The Mountaineers beat the Lakers 97-51, bouncing back nicely after two straight losses to Ohio State and Villanova over the past two weeks. WVU advances to 7-2 on the season, while Mercyhurst remains winless, 0-8 on the year.

“A little bit better from the effort,” head coach Mark Kellogg said. “All the Es. The effort, enthusiasm, emotion and those types of things. I thought we played with a little bit more of that from the beginning. Still made mistakes in that third quarter, defensively wasn’t great. We’ll be picky and still have some standards and goals that maybe we didn’t quite meet.”

The bounce-back domination was a team effort, with five players scoring double-digits for the Mountaineers. Senior guard Jordan Harrison led WVU on a season-high 19 points, shooting 6-for-10 from the floor, knocking down three 3-pointers. 

“I didn’t think she was playing to the level that I know she’s capable of,” Kellogg said. “I think she put some added pressure on herself. Maybe just starting to relax a little bit and realize she’s got some really good pieces around her, and so she can maybe just calm down a little bit. Good for her to see it go through.”

Leading scorer redshirt junior Gia Cooke had 12 points. Junior forward Carter McCray had a season-high 15 points as well. 

Kellogg said the team needed to stop dribbling as much and spread the ball around a lot more, through passing. 

“Definitely was a point of emphasis,” senior guard Syndey Shaw said, who had 13 points. “I think it showed from how we played today and how we played in the past couple of days. It’s more fun that way, just getting everybody involved.”

It was all Mountaineers from tipoff. It took Mercyhurst halfway through the first quarter to score its first points on a deep 3-pointer. Meanwhile, WVU scored 16, while the Lakers were trying to find the net.

It was another productive night shooting for the Mountaineers. WVU spread the ball around, with 10 players registering a basket. The Mountaineers shot 52.4% from the floor, which is a lot better than their last outing against Villanova, where they shot 32.8%. This type of performance looked like what WVU had shown through the first six games.

The Mountaineers also knocked down eight 3-pointers to add to the 50 points in the paint.

“I still thought we missed too many for my flavor,” Kellogg said. “Especially against a team that didn’t present as much of any resistance, if you will, at the rim. We still missed too many. Our 2-point field goal percentage hasn’t been as high as I would like.”

Midway through the third quarter, Harrison hit a 3-pointer to give WVU its biggest lead of the game at 39. The lead continued to grow over the rest of the night and reached 47 points during the fourth quarter. 

Mercyhurst is nowhere near on the same level as Ohio State and Villanova, but the performance is reassuring, as the Mountaineers near Big 12 play on Dec. 21 against Houston. 

WVU’s defense got back on track, too. In the Mountaineers’ two losses, they let up 80-plus points in both games. WVU hadn’t allowed 80-plus in a game this season. The Mountaineers only allowed Mercyhurst to score 51 points, and most of its points were from deep 3-pointers, because the Lakers didn’t dare to go into the paint. 

WVU forced the Lakers to turn the ball over 29 times. The Mountaineers had 17 steals. 

“We put an emphasis on being more aggressive on defense,” Shaw said. “I feel like our defense has been our identity for however long, and we’ve been lacking a little bit. I think just turning up the aggression just led to all those steals.”

WVU doesn’t have much competition in its next game, either. The Mountaineers host Texas Southern on Monday, Dec. 8, who is 3-3 and allowed Texas to score 111 points. WVU looks to build some confidence, heading into Georgia Tech and Texas A&M after that. 

“We probably needed a get-right game, maybe a little bit,” Kellogg said. “See if we can’t get a few things fixed, and then we can turn our attention now to Texas Southern for Monday.”