Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia wanted to lock down TCU's 3-point shooters and use its size advantage inside. Both objectives accomplished in tonight's 81-49 victory at the WVU Coliseum.
 
The Horned Frogs were undefeated in Big 12 play with early-January victories over Iowa State, Kansas State and Oklahoma State.
 
But tonight it ran into college basketball's 12^th-ranked team who looked the part. West Virginia shot a season-high 58 percent from the floor and held TCU to a season-low 49 points in perhaps its best all-around performance of the season.
 
It usually doesn't take veteran coach Bob Huggins long to find things to harp on with his team and tonight he really had to search hard to find something. He eventually found something with turnovers – 14 against the Horned Frogs, but that's down seven from Saturday's game against Texas Tech. And one line over was 20 assists, which was one shy of the season-high 21 made in a blowout win over Austin Peay last month.
 
"We're getting better," he said. "We've just got to continue to get better."
 
A student-skewed crowd of 11,445 watched the Mountaineers build a 14-point halftime lead and then step on the gas midway through the second half once TCU got the lead down to eight with 15:47 to go.
 
West Virginia outscored the Horned Frogs 14-2 over the next three minutes to build a 20-point lead and the margin grew as Huggins continued to bring in fresh players.
 
The bench produced 39 of the Mountaineers' 81 points tonight and the scoring was equally distributed throughout the team.
 
Sean McNeil and Chase Harler came off the bench to hit a couple of 3s in the first half and that really opened things up inside for the bigs.
 
Sophomore forward Derek Culver tallied a game-high 17 to go with 11 rebounds for 22^nd double-double of his 42-game career. Post-mate Oscar Tshiebwe contributed 11 points and six rebounds while Jermaine Haley and freshman Miles McBride added 11 each.
 
For McBride, it was his seventh straight game reaching double figures.
 
A lot of Culver's and Tshiebwe's scoring was the result of the outstanding interior passing by forward Gabe Oshabuohien, whose stat line is full of crooked numbers once you get beyond field goals made. He grabbed five boards, handed out five assists, made three steals and drew the largest ovation from the crowd when he exited the game late in the second half after coming up with another 50-50 ball.
 
"He gets to help and he's really active," Huggins said. "He creates a lot of loose ball situations and comes up with a lot of them."
 
All of the specialty stats were in West Virginia's favor with the two biggest being points in the paint (36-10) and bench scoring (39-6).
 
TCU's two bigs, Kevin Samuel and Jaedon LeDee, used up all 10 of their fouls trying to guard Culver and Tshiebwe, while leading scorer Desmond Bane had an off night with just 13 points on 4-of-8 shooting. He was averaging 17.1 points per game, second to Kansas' Devon Dotson's 18-point average among conference scorers.
 
R.J. Nembhard led the Frogs with 14.
 
"I thought defensively we were very good," said Huggins, now just two wins shy of tying Adolph Rupp for seventh place in NCAA history for career wins with 876. 

"(We were) certainly outplayed in every way; outplayed, out-executed, out-coached, out-performed," TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. "I'm disappointed, but I told our guys afterwards, 'This is going to be a one-loss thing and get ready for Oklahoma.' Give them credit for playing well and outplaying us in every facet possible."
 
The victory boosts West Virginia's record to 14-2, 3-1 while TCU falls to 12-4, 3-1. The Mountaineers have now won three straight and six of seven since a two-point loss at St. John's on Dec. 7.
 
WVU returns to the road to face Kansas State on Saturday afternoon in Manhattan. The Wildcats dropped a 77-63 decision to Texas Tech earlier tonight to fall to 7-9, 0-4.