The SDSU women’s basketball team got off to a strong start against St. Cloud State on Friday night and never looked back, pounding the Division II foe in its season opener, 74-35 at Frost Arena.

Jill Young led all scorers with 25 points, including seven three-pointers, tying career-highs in both categories and the Jackrabbits had little trouble putting away the Huskies for their 19th straight season-opening win. The Jackrabbits scored the first 12 points of the game and SDSU’s defense hand-cuffed St. Cloud State’s offense to 10 points in the first half, holding them to 24 percent shooting for the game.

“Defensively, we played hard,” SDSU head coach Aaron Johnston said. “I thought we showed a lot of urgency and we didn’t have it the last few days in practice but I thought we played really well.”

Jennie Sunnarborg added 11 points and nine assists for the Jacks, helping SDSU to 49-27 advantage on in the rebounding category. The Jackrabbits were sloppy at times, turning the ball over 21 times but Johnston attributed a lot of that to transition play.

“A lot of our turnovers were in transition, trying to feed the post turnovers. In terms of getting into the flow of the offense, I thought it was pretty good,” Johnston said.

SDSU (1-0) hosts Utah State on Sunday at Frost Arena at 2 p.m.