MORGANTOWN — Dawn Plitzuweit went to make a left turn into the WVU Coliseum on Sunday and sort of got a welcome-to-Morgantown moment.
“I came two hours before the game today, and I was in a traffic jam,” Plitzuweit said after guiding the WVU women’s basketball team to an 83-49 exhibition victory over Fairmont State. “I thought that was great. That was awesome, but, man, that light turned green and people still weren’t moving. It took forever to get through that light.”
Plitzuweit’s first official game as WVU’s head coach did not go without its speed bumps.
She’s still finding her way around the Coliseum and lost her personal security guide at halftime.
“Willard is kind of my buddy, but I ditched him at one point,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”
One of her assistants asked her how the postgame singing of Country Roads went?
“I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Our players lined up and started singing with our fans,” Plitzuweit said. “I was told the coaches didn’t have to sing. Why wouldn’t we? That was fun.”
The rest was just basketball, and Plitzuweit knows all about that from her days turning South Dakota into a noticeable mid-major.
WVU began the game on a 14-2 run, survived some rough patches in the second quarter and then cruised from there.
WVU, which opens the season at home on Nov. 10 against USC Upstate, got some balanced scoring throughout its rotation of guards.
Jayla Hemingway had 14 points on 6 of 12 shooting.
Madisen Smith had nine of her 13 points in the first half and J.J. Quinerly threw in 12 points.
A new face — 6-foot-3 center Kylee Blacksten, a transfer from Colorado — showed a shooter’s touch with two 3-pointers and she added eight points.
“It’s definitely different playing with a stretch (center),” Smith said. “She can shoot the ball great. The pick-and-pop is always there. Just to have a player that big who can shoot the ball, that’s hard to guard.”
The Mountaineers got more offense going to the basket than they did from the outside.
WVU shot just 5 of 24 from 3-point range, so finding some sort of happy medium is in store, because those driving lanes may not be as open as the competition picks up.
“We had some great shots in the first half, open shots from the arc,” Plitzuweit said. “Our players were aggressive and we told them catch to shoot, and so we caught it and shot it. We were open, but we didn’t make them.
“At halftime, we talked about passing some of those up early to attack the rim, because we felt like we could get that shot later in the shot clock.”
WVU finished with a 41-26 edge in rebounds and her players took another step in the process of bringing together something so new and trying to make it familiar.
“Everything is going pretty well,” said WVU guard Savannah Samuel, who scored eight points and added five rebounds. “Obviously at first, with new coaches, new players and a new system, it was tough. We’ve been working hard every day. Everyone is adjusting and getting acclimated to the new plays and new style. The sky is the limit for us.”
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