MORANTOWN — Vasean Allette’s and-one drive to the bucket with 43 seconds remaining Wednesday night was good enough to hand TCU head coach Jamie Dixon a bit of history.
Dixon, the former head coach at Pitt when WVU and the Panthers battled in the old Big East days, picked up his 500th career victory, as TCU held off the Mountaineers 65-60 inside Schollmaier Arena.
Dixon’s history against WVU runs long, and he’s got 17 of his 500 wins against the Mountaineers.
This one came after a back-and-forth battle that saw Allette, a transfer from Old Dominion, take a hard drive down the left side of the lane to break a 58-58 tie in the final minute.
He finished with a double-double with 22 points and 11 rebounds, and it was his offensive rebound and putback that sealed the deal with 9.5 seconds left to secure TCU’s fourth consecutive win against the Mountaineers (14-8, 5-6 Big 12).
“The biggest thing is the first half (TCU) shot 35%, and the second half, they shot 50%,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said on his radio postgame show. “That’s the game. We have to defend.
“We got down 11 and we cranked it up again and crawled back into a tie game. Now it comes down to who makes the most plays in the last few minutes, and they did.”
The early going was just about what you would expect from the two lowest-scoring teams in the Big 12. It was methodical and both teams went through some slow spurts.
The best example may have been WVU’s early spurt. The Mountaineers needed more than six minutes to go on a 10-0 run.
Small’s hot hand — the Big 12’s leading scorer had 10 points at the break — nailed a couple of 3-pointers and scored on an inbounds play to give WVU a 25-13 lead.
“At the four-minute timeout, I told them they had worked their tails off the first 15 minutes,” DeVries said. “The last four, we’ve got to finish this. Don’t let them back into it.”
Over the final six minutes of the half, it was TCU’s turn to go on a run.
WVU was held to just four points the rest of the way and the Horned Frogs cut the 12-point deficit down to 29-28 at halftime.
From there, it was Noah Reynolds’ time to shine. The transfer from Green Bay — he averaged 20 points a game for the Phoenix last season — came out of the break with nine of the Horned Frogs’ first 16 points.
By the 12-minute mark of the second half, TCU had gone from down 12 to a 46-36 lead.
Meanwhile, Small missed his first five attempts of the second half, WVU made just one of its first six 3-point attempts and TCU won the battle on the glass.
That last part shouldn’t be much of a surprise. WVU was outrebounded in nine of its first 10 Big 12 games.
What was a surprise was how WVU unraveled in the middle part of the second half.
Down 47-39, DeVries elected to try a full-court press, but that turned into transition dunks from David Punch, Ernest Udeh Jr. and Allette, which forced WVU to call a timeout.
“We tried pressing a few times,” DeVries said. “To be honest, it was a disaster, and we got back out of it.”
That came with 7:53 remaining, and TCU led 54-45.
Here’s how WVU made it a game: Small, who led WVU with 20 points, got going again.
He scored eight consecutive points, including one 3-pointer that must have been at least 26-feet away.
Toby Okani scored on a backdoor cut on what was Small’s seventh assist, and Jonathan Powell finally nailed a three.
It was a 12-2 run over four minutes that also included WVU forcing a shot-clock violation that tied the game at 56.
It ultimately led to disappointment, as Allette and TCU scored seven straight points in the final 60 seconds.
Reynolds added 20 points for the Horned Frogs (12-10, 5-7), who also came away with a 34-26 rebounding advantage.
TCU, which came into the game 15th in the Big 12 in free-throw shooting, finished 20 of 23 from the line. WVU went just 2 of 5 from the foul line.
“We’ve got to play without fouling,” DeVries said.
