West Virginia women’s basketball rolled on to remain unbeaten on the season Tuesday night.

The Mountaineers were in a little battle in the first quarter, but quickly pulled away, cruising to a 89-61 win over Temple. The win was the 20th-straight regular-season win for head coach Mark Kellogg’s squad.

WVU is now 3-0 on the season and plays No. 15 Duke in Colonial Hall in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on Friday. The Blue Devils are 1-1 on the year.

It was a successful night, and Kellogg said he actually missed a practice leading up to the game because of personal reasons.

“Really proud of our group,” Kellogg said. “Proud of our team, coaching staff… First time in my career that I’ve ever missed some prep time. But, I thought my staff did a phenomenal job.”

The Owls gave WVU a little fight early, with some tough interior defense, but the Mountaineers hit their stride on the perimeter, draining 3-pointers.

Junior forward Riley Makalusky came off the bench and nailed a deep shot to take the lead 14-11 with under three minutes to play in the first period. Makalusky’s 3-pointer started a 10-0 run, and from there, it was all WVU.

The offense was rolling and shot at 52.5% a clip, which was the highest this season. The Mountaineers also made a season-high 10 from 3-pointers, too.

WVU spread the ball around, with 10 players scoring at least one basket, and four scored in double-digits. Jordan Harrison nearly hit the mark with nine.

With a comfortable lead, the bench got involved. The Mountaineers had 32 points off the bench, which is promising heading into Duke in a couple of days, where they’ll need all hands on deck.

“It was good to see a bunch of kids score, share it and spread it,” Kellogg said. “Like I said, shoot it at a high percentage.”

Junior Gia Cooke and senior guard Sydney Shaw both led the team with 16 points. Cooke’s 16 was a season-high, and most of her points were free throws. Shaw was 4-for-7 from deep and had her first career double-double, with 10 rebounds.

Cooke had been slowly ramping up after transferring in from Houston in the offseason. She’s been watching a lot of film to get more comfortable.

“Looking at past games, seeing if I was missing my spots, or missing my teammates,” Cooke said. “Just being more aggressive, and just using my teammates well… I definitely just got more comfortable this game. Stopped overthinking it.”

One of the areas Kellogg thought could’ve been better was rebounding. Kellogg said Temple’s 6-foot-1 forward was going to create problems rebounding, and she had eight boards, but WVU still outrebounded the Owls.

Shaw led with 10 rebounds, which was a bit new for her this year.

“They were really on me bad in the offseason about my rebounding last year, so I kind of took it personally,” Shaw said. “I’ve been making it a point to go out there and at least grab one every couple of possessions. At least try.”

WVU’s defense kept putting on the pressure. The Mountaineers made it difficult for Temple to score out on the perimeter, and when Temple decided to drive inside, the Mountaineers flooded the paint. The defense forced a season-high 19 turnovers, and the offense scored 24 points off of them.

“Didn’t always love us defensively,” Kellogg said. “Defensively, we’ll continue to get better on that end. We had been a little bit better than we had been tonight.”

WVU did have some turnovers of its own (18), so there are still some areas to improve in.

Temple tried to fight back. The Owls’ junior guard Kaylah Turner was finding success and led in points. She was 9-for-22 from the field for 23 points, leading all scorers.

But the lead never shrank to below double-digits after the Mountaineers stormed ahead at the end of the first, providing some momentum, heading into Friday’s matchup with Duke.

“I don’t imagine we are going to score 89 on the Blue Devils, but at least we got it going a little bit,” Kellogg said. “We saw the ball go through the hoop.”