WVU Women’s Basketball Defeats Elon 75-62 in NCAA First Round

March Madness fully injected itself into the 6-11 matchup in the Bridgeport Region on Friday. West Virginia and Elon traded baskets, leads and stops from start to finish, but the No.6 Mountaineers came out with a 75-62 victory in College Park, Maryland.

A 10-0 run in the middle of the fourth quarter gave the Big 12 tournament champions the decisive advantage they needed.

WVU will face host and No. 3 seed Maryland on Sunday.

Tynice Martin was again stellar for WVU. Her 26 points pushed her career total over the 1,000-point mark and lifted her team to victory.

Shay Burnett’s dynamic scoring kept the Phoenix in the game for much of the afternoon. She attacked the WVU defense all day, scoring 19 points to lead Elon.

Although the Mountaineers opened up decent leads throughout the game, any run was answered by Elon. After falling behind by 7 after halftime, the Phoenix took the lead with just more than three minutes left in the third quarter.

In the fourth quarter, WVU exercised its will on the boards. In total, the Mountaineers out-rebounded the Phoenix 32-26.

WVU mounted a 10-0 run during a 2:55 stretch in the final. During that run, Katrina Pardee drained two three pointers to stretch the lead.

Despite shooting 29 percent in the first quarter, WVU ended up shooting 47.4 percent, 8-17 from three. They were able to negate much of Elon’s upset big by out-rebounded the Phoenix 38-29.

Two other Phoenix tallied double-digit points. Lauren Brown contributed 17 points and Malaya Johnson added 10

Lanay Montgomery took home a double-double, scoring 13 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. Pardee added 14 points, making 4 three-point field goals.

Maryland defeated No. 14 Bucknell 103-61 in the first game of the day.