MORGANTOWN — Damion Baugh had a career night with 16 points and 10 assists and No. 15 TCU shot 52% from the floor to knock off WVU 76-72 at Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena on Tuesday night.
The loss ended a run of momentum for the Mountaineers and handed them their fifth loss in seven road games this season.
“We didn’t come out with a lot of enthusiasm,” WVU head coach Bob Huggins said on his radio postgame show. “I was extremely upset over the first 10 minutes of the game with our lack of energy and our lack of competitiveness.”
After the game was over, WVU forward Jimmy Bell Jr. got into a shouting match with TCU students and had to be held back by teammates and assistant coaches.
“You had a bunch of kids up there pointing and calling names and things,” Huggins said. “From what I understand, one of them was pointing a finger in Jimmy Bell’s mother’s face, of which Jimmy didn’t take too kindly to.”
If TCU — playing without the Big 12’s second-leading scorer in guard Mike Miles Jr., who suffered a hyperextended right knee last Saturday — was supposed to tuck its tail and hide, someone forgot to tell that to the Horned Frogs (17-5, 6-3 Big 12) early on.
Instead, TCU got out and ran and scored nearly at will in the paint over the first half.
TCU made 17 of its first 33 shots, scored 28 points near the rim and eight players scored at least one bucket in taking a 36-32 halftime lead.
One of those players who scored for TCU was center Eddie Lampkin, who was originally thought to be sitting out with a high ankle sprain, but he entered five minutes into the game and scored on a tip-in a minute later. He ran gingerly during his six minutes of action, but found ways to be effective by adding two assists and a rebound.
The nation’s leading transition team was held to just eight fast-break points when they met in Morgantown two weeks ago, but TCU had that much by halftime in this one and finished with 20.
Meanwhile, Tre Mitchell was the main man early on for the Mountaineers (13-9, 2-7).
The 6-foot-9 Pittsburgh native hit his first three shots of the game and then added a nice spin move in the paint minutes later to give him nine points in the first half to keep WVU in the game.
He finished with 15 points, six rebounds and four assists.
That all led to a second half that was dominated, for the most part, by the Horned Frogs, who have now won their last three Big 12 games since that loss in Morgantown.
TCU continued to run and gun, took care of the ball (just seven turnovers in all), scored 48 points in the paint and held its own on the glass.
“That’s just absurd,” Huggins said of the 48 points allowed in the paint. “That’s absurd, especially with the guys we have.”
And when Xavier Cork caught a lob for a dunk and Baugh hit two free throws, TCU had run its lead up to 65-53 with just 4:32 remaining.
“We put ourselves in a hole,” Huggins said. “You put yourself in a hole and every little thing becomes way more important than what it really is. We put ourselves in a bad bad position and we just didn’t find a way out of it.”
Outside of a quick 9-6 lead early in the game, WVU was forced to play from behind the rest of the way.
The reason was outside of Mitchell, no one else Huggins played was consistent.
Erik Stevenson, coming off a 31-point game against Auburn on Saturday, didn’t hit his first 3-pointer until there was 3:12 left in the game.
Stevenson did finish with a game-high 17 points, but needed 17 shots to do it and he was just 1 of 6 from behind the arc.
Bell, who had a double-double against the Horned Frogs in the first meeting, finished with just four points and three rebounds in this one.
Emmitt Matthews Jr. also struggled and did not score in the first half. He did play better in the second half and finished 4 of 8 shooting for 10 points.
“The guys who are supposed to be our leaders did not lead,” Huggins said. “We may have to find ourselves some new leaders. You can’t have your leaders pouting, because they made mistakes. It’s their fault. It’s not anybody else’s fault. That’s guys who have been here a long time.”
Cork, filling in for Lampkin, added 15 points. Shahada Wells and JaKobe Coles each had 17 for the Horned Frogs.
