MORGANTOWN — West Virginia was crowned by a Prince on Sunday.
It’s not as good as it sounds.
Sedona Prince dominated on the inside, and when the 6-foot-7 center wasn’t scoring in the paint or showing off her outside shooting skills, she was making life miserable on the defensive end with seven blocks while effecting many other chances at the rim.
Along the way, 10th-ranked TCU officially knocked No. 17 WVU out of the running for a Big 12 regular-season title with a 71-50 victory inside Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
“I thought our team showed up ready to hoop today,” TCU head coach Mark Campbell said. “We were locked into the defensive end. Against that team, that’s as good a defensive effort as we’ve played over the course of 40 minutes all season.”
The Mountaineers (21-6, 11-5 Big 12) can now finish no higher than third in the league standings, with a more likely projection being a fifth-place finish, depending on how WVU plays against Utah on Wednesday inside the Coliseum.
“We still have a lot to play for,” WVU head coach Mark Kellogg said. “We’ll get back to the drawing board and figure it out.”
TCU, meanwhile, pulled even with Baylor at the top of the Big 12 standings. Those two teams play in the final game of the regular season.
Prince finished with 20 points and eight rebounds, while teammate Hailey Van Lith poured in 26 points.
Outside of the first four minutes of the first quarter, TCU (26-3, 14-2) dominated with Prince and Van Lith. The duo combined for 13 of the Horned Frogs’ 20 points and WVU already faced an 11-point deficit heading into the second quarter.
“We just didn’t play very well,” Kellogg said. “We didn’t make shots when we got the right shots. At times, I didn’t think we took the right shot. We didn’t get stops when we needed to get stops. We couldn’t put any runs together. They did and we didn’t have any answers.”
It didn’t get much better from there, as WVU was held its season low in points after being held to a season low 31% (18 of 59) shooting.
Much of that was because of Prince and her ability to block and alter shots. Time and again, WVU guards drove into the lane only to be cut off by Prince, forcing WVU to throw the ball back outside and start again.
WVU never got as close as 14 points, which came early in the fourth quarter. Van Lith then got hot and scored 10 points in the quarter to give TCU its largest lead of 65-43 with 4:22 remaining.
“Today, I had a lot of one-on-one matchups,” Van Lith said. “I figured I’d take advantage of it. I got a lot of great opportunities. Against the zone, I was able to find the middle and get some easy looks.”
TCU set a program record with its 26th victory of the season and extended its home winning streak to 21 games, the longest streak in the Big 12.
“This whole ride has been magical. This whole season has been magical,” Campbell said. “You put together a collection of young ladies who are really talented. That’s step one. The second piece is are they willing to jump in with two feet and play the game right? It takes all of those things to have a chance to go undefeated at home. We’ve got the talent. They came together in June and they’ve been all-in this whole time.”
J.J. Quinerly led the Mountaineers with 13 points, but she was just 5 of 18 shooting. Jordan Harrison added 11 points, five rebounds and five assists, but was just 3 of 14 from the field.
It was WVU’s worst loss since also losing by 21 points to Texas last season.
