West Virginia Aims for Season Sweep Over No. 11 TCU
Ft. Worth, TX, - The West Virginia Mountaineers (13-8, 2-6) are on the road for the return game against the No. 15 TCU Horned Frogs (16-5, 5-3) Wednesday night, with tipoff set for 9:00 p.m. EST and will broadcast on ESPNU.
West Virginia began Big 12 Conference 0-5 before capturing its first league win over TCU 74-65 in the first meeting less than two weeks ago. The Mountaineers forced 19 turnovers on the night to build an 18-point advantage, but the Horned Frogs were able to get within two with five minutes left to play.
Jan. 18, 2023: West Virginia guard Kedrian Johnson looking over the TCU defense. The Mountaineers beat the 14th-ranked Horned Frogs 74-65 inside the WVU Coliseum.
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Joe Toussaint hit a couple crucial buckets and Jimmy Bell Jr. added a dunk and a pair of free throws while the Mountaineers finished 6-8 down the stretch to pull away from TCU to grab the win.
“I’m sure they’re going to adjust because we doubled all the ball screens the first time and (TCU head coach) Jamie (Dixon) made reference to it in a couple of his interviews afterwards,” said West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins.
TCU responded with an emphatic 83-60 win at Kansas before returning home and handling Oklahoma 79-52.
TCU leading scorer put up 21 points against the Mountaineers in the first meeting and followed with 15 and 21 points, respectively. However, the junior guard went down with a knee injury in the opening minutes of the Big 12/SEC Challenge versus Mississippi State, in which the Horned Frogs lost the game in overtime 81-74 and will not suit up for TCU against West Virginia.
“I don’t think it changes them very much, they’ve got multiple guys that make shots,” Huggins said. “I watched a bunch of their games yesterday and when Miles has a bad day, they have a lot of their people capable of stepping up, and they’ve got at least three or four guys who are really good shooters, and they’ve got guys that handle the ball well. Obviously, he’s a great player, they’re going to miss him, but they have a whole bunch of other guys that can step up for him.”
Forward Emmanuel Miller and guard Damion Baugh combined for 26 points in the first matchup. Miller is second on the team in scoring with 13.5 points per game to go with 6.5 rebounds per game while Baugh is averaging 12.7 ppg and dishing a team-high 4.9 rebounds per game.
West Virginia is 2-1 since squaring off with TCU. The Mountaineers fell to, then, seventh-ranked Texas before snagging the program’s first conference road win in nearly two years over Texas Tech and knocked off No. 15 Auburn on Saturday.
Guard Erik Stevenson produced a career-high 31 points and forward Jimmy Bell attacked an Auburn team that ranked third in the country in blocked shots (6.1 bpg) with 15 points.
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West Virginia is 3-1 since the beginning of Big 12 play, with two of the wins coming against top 15 opponents.
“I think in the beginning [of the season] we were kind of lost. We had guys in the portal, we had transfers, we had freshmen, we had some guys returning, we had such a conglomeration of a lot of different people that were coached so many different ways and to be able to get all those guys on the same page was really a struggle and I think we’re to a point now where everybody understands what their role is, they understand what they can do, they understand what their teammates can do and I think that puts us in a much better place,” said Huggins.
Guard Kedrian Johnson led the Mountaineers with 20 points in the win over TCU while Bell scored 15 and hauled in 12 rebounds.
Huggins was asked if the Mountaineers need to ‘tweak’ some things since the prior meeting and he responded with, “I think we’re at the point where we’re getting fairly good at what we do so we’ll probably just keep doing what we do.”
Huggins also added, “I think you can tweak some things, but I think, by and large, you do what you do. You do what you’re good at, I mean, you’ve practiced it all year.”
West Virginia is 18-4 all-time versus TCU but the four losses have come in the last five trips to Ft. Worth.
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