A lack of energy never allowed Western Kentucky to truly put away Old Dominion.

The Lady Toppers couldn’t find any rhythm in a 62-48 win over the Lady Monarchs on Thursday at E.A. Diddle Arena.

WKU’s seventh straight win was a slugfest with 43 fouls called and a lackluster effort overall.

“I’ll take the W,” WKU coach Michelle Clark-Heard said. “It wasn’t the best basketball game we’ve played, but we found a way. This year we’ve been really good about bringing energy and doing those things and I feel like we were flat.”

Old Dominion (5-19 overall, 3-7 Conference USA) got out to a four-point lead in the first two minutes before WKU (18-5, 9-1) pushed ahead. The Lady Toppers led by as many as 20 points in the third quarter and held a double-digit lead until the end.

Tashia Brown earned her second straight double-double with 23 points and 11 rebounds while freshman Sherry Porter chipped in 12 points on 5-of-10 shooting.

WKU turned in a 18-of-45 (.400) clip from the floor, 3-of-9 (.333) mark from behind the arc and shot 23-of-33 (.697) from the free-throw line.

“Games like this really prepare you,” Porter said. “Not everything is going to be perfect, so you have to dig deep and find what gets you going and that’s what we did.”

Ivy Brown had eight points and 10 rebounds and freshman Terri Smith hit both of her 3-point attempts against ODU to finish with six points. At one point in the third quarter, Heard played four freshmen on the floor, but played Smith, Porter and Nichel Tampa for an extended stretch with the senior Brown duo.

WKU’s 9-1 mark in league play keeps it in a three-way tie atop C-USA with Rice and Alabama-Birmingham. The Lady Toppers travel to Rice on Saturday for a 2 p.m. tipoff. The Owls are 9-0 this season at the Tudor Fieldhouse in Houston.

“It’s February,” Tashia Brown said. “Coach always says we should be playing our best basketball. We just try to stay consistent and play together and start gelling. … It wasn’t our best game. We just try to keep the flow moving and get stops when we needed them and try to stay ahead.”

An early 10-0 run helped push WKU ahead 17-10 after one quarter. Twenty-two fouls in the first half kept either team from establishing any rhythm. Smith provided a quick spark off the bench with a pair of 3s in the last 3:41 of the second quarter. Her second triple followed up an Ivy Brown 3 that gave WKU a 34-20 lead.

WKU shot 46.2 percent from the floor in the second quarter and took a 34-22 lead into halftime behind 12 points from Tashia Brown.

A pair of Dee Givens free throws stretched WKU’s lead by 20 late in the third quarter, and Old Dominion couldn’t generate a real threat to the Lady Toppers’ lead.

WKU held freshman Victoria Morris, Old Dominion’s leading scorer, to seven points on 3-of-16 shooting. Taylor Edwards led the Lady Monarchs with 16 points and Ashley Jackson added 10 points.

“I think every game you learn from every situation, even myself as a coach,” Heard said. “I learn more and more about our players and who can handle every situation and every game is different. Hopefully they learned we have to be ready to go and we can’t come out flat like we did today.”

Notes

Michelle Clark-Heard is now 148-44 as WKU’s coach. … WKU leads the all-time series with ODU 15-8, including eight straight wins in C-USA. … With 23 points, Tashia Brown moved ahead of Leslie Logsdon into sixth on WKU’s all-time scoring list with 1,865 points. … Brown earned her second straight double-double with 23 points and 11 rebounds, her third of the season and fourth of her career. … Brown’s 19 free-throw attempts are the most in a WKU game since 2008. … Announced attendance was 3,568.{&end}