Bridges and Mountaineers Take Care of Business and Grab the Season Sweep Over TCU

The West Virginia Mountaineers got another stiff test from the TCU Horned Frogs Thursday evening but were able to pull out the 76-67 win. Jalen Bridges registered a career-high 22 points and a career-high 12 rebounds, while Derek Culver continued to show he’s the best big man in the league, putting up 17 points and grabbing eight rebounds.

Just like in the first meeting, buckets were again tough to come by until coming out of the first media timeout. West Virginia constructed a 15-1 run on their way to a 16-point advantage behind a trio of threes from Jalen Bridges as he went for 12 first-half points.

Defensively, West Virginia held TCU to their lowest first-half output of the season at 18 points on 4-22 shooting from the field, including 1-7 from behind the arc and have of their points coming from the free-throw line hitting 9-12 as West Virginia held a 32-18 lead at halftime.

TCU started the second half on a 4-0 spurt before West Virginia quickly answered but again, the Horned Frogs produced two easy buckets, and Huggins had seen enough and called a timeout. The Mountaineers regrouped to go up 15 after Bridges collects the steal and drives the length of the floor and was fouled and hit both free throws.

However, the Horned Frogs started hitting shots, and guard RJ Nembhard hit his first field goal of the game, burying a three with Emmitt Matthews Jr.'s hand in his face off the left wing to get TCU within eight near the midway point of the second half.

Miles “Deuce” McBride answered with a leftwing three of his own, but TCU continued to chip away at the lead and got within seven with 7:37 left in the game.

“Well, (TCU head coach) Jamie (Dixon) is a good coach. I think you have to give him a lot of credit and give his players a lot of credit and they got a bunch of guys who can make shots,” said Huggins. “And when we let down, they made shots and then we fumbled balls and we had how many scoring opportunities and didn’t score? We were point blank and didn’t score.”

Bridges responded by attacking the basket and drawing the foul, again, hitting a pair of free throws ending the night 8-9 from the line.

Bridges hit a three from the left side to put West Virginia up 13, 67-54 with just under three minutes remaining in the game. He ended the evening registering his first career double-double with a career-high 22 points and a career-high 12 rebounds.

“He’s really worked at it. He’s a guy who gets in the gym, but he works on what you ask him to work on and he’s getting better and better and better because of that and I think the other thing is he knows what he can do and what he can’t,” said Huggins. “So, he really tries to accentuate the positive and stay away with the negative.”

The Mountaineers were forced to finish the game out from the line and delivered going 9-10 to seal the game 76-67.

West Virginia has another quick turnaround and welcomes in the No. 17 Oklahoma State Cowboys at 2:00 pm EST on ESPN+.

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