MORGANTOWN – By her own admission, Jordan Harrison is ready for anything, yet never knows what to expect.
To that extent, the West Virginia junior point guard may be better served having the nickname Just In Case.
As in, just in case the No. 16 Mountaineers need scoring, get the ball to Harrison, or just in case the team needs passing, get the ball to Harrison.
“When you’re as talented as Jordan, you can feel it,” was the way WVU head coach Mark Kellogg explained it following the Mountaineers’ 85-41 season-opening victory against Towson on Tuesday. “She’s a true point guard and she understands time and moment and who has the hot hand.”
The latest example came against the Tigers (0-1), who stuck around in the first half after WVU’s J.J. Quinerly got off to a slow start and then battled foul trouble.
Enter Harrison, who likely never imagined she would have to be the scoring star in this game, but that’s exactly what she became.
“I knew once I got going, my teammates would feed off my energy,” Harrison said. “I was just trying to get something going for us so we could eventually catch our rhythm.”
Harrison scored 18 of her game-high 23 points in the first half. If it didn’t happen, this game would have looked much differently.
“I try not to think too hard on what I have to do,” Harrison said. “I never know when it’s going to be my chance to step up.”
But, when she looked around Tuesday and saw other teammates struggling, Harrison literally put the Mountaineers (1-0) on her shoulders.
“It’s just a natural response,” she said. “When I see my teammates struggling, I know I’ve got to get the ball in the hole. They’ll do the same thing if I wasn’t scoring. They would do the same for me.”
She finished 7 of 13 shooting, added eight assists and six steals on a night when the Mountaineers forced 32 turnovers with their full-court pressure.
“She was the scoring in the second quarter,” Kellogg said of Harrison. “She looked around and probably went, ‘OK, I might need to go a little bit until we can get some other kids going.’
“That’s what Jordan is. She’s now a junior and has played a lot of college games and has had a lot of success. That’s what I expect from that kid.”
Her teammates eventually got going in the second half and the game became the expected blowout.
Auburn transfer Sydney Shaw connected on five 3-pointers and scored 19 points.
Quinerly scored in quick bursts in the second half and finished with 14 points in 20 minutes of action, as WVU outscored the Tigers 47-16 in the second half.
“The end result, obviously, is going to look pretty good, but the first quarter was not particularly good,” Kellogg said. “I expected a little more out of us. We couldn’t find any flow. We got better as the game went.”
WVU hit 12 3-pointers and came away with 17 steals.
“We had some moments where we kind of looked like ourselves,” Kellogg said. “It kind of got better as the game went. We just kind of pieced it together. We battled. We’ve got work to do. It was an OK performance that got a little bit better.”
