Box Score MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – There has been a clear pattern in West Virginia's two losses to Kansas this year – the Mountaineers work hard to get a six-point halftime lead and then watch the Jayhawks turn up the heat in the second half.
 
In Lawrence last month, Kansas limited West Virginia to only seven second-half field goals to pull away with a 60-53 victory. 
 
Tonight it got just eight in a repeat performance.
 
Third-ranked Kansas held West Virginia scoreless over the remaining 5:07 to pull away with a 58-49 win Wednesday night at a sold-out WVU Coliseum.
 
The win keeps Kansas one game behind undefeated Baylor in the Big 12 standings with four weeks left in the regular season.
 
West Virginia (18-6, 6-5) falls below Texas Tech into fourth place and is now just a half-game ahead of Oklahoma. 
 
WVU led by nine when Miles McBride got a short jumper to go down with 13:31 remaining, and the next field goal by Gabe Osabuohien two minutes later kept the margin at seven.  
 
But after that, only two more field goals fell through the cylinder by Derek Culver at 9:04 and by Osabuohien at 5:59.
 
"You aren't going to win when you don't make shots," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. "We didn't make shots inside, we didn't make shots outside and we turned the ball over at the most inopportune times."
 
Udoka Azubuike, who played most of the second half with three fouls, answered Osabuohien's basket with a score of his own and a Marcus Garrett steal led to a pair of Isaiah Moss free throws, giving Kansas its first lead of the second half at 49-48.
 
Jermaine Haley briefly tied it when he made the first of two free throws, but his second miss led to Isaiah Moss' big transition 3 from the corner. Two more from Moss at the free throw line pushed the KU lead to five, forcing the inexperienced Mountaineers to begin chasing Kansas. 
 
When that happened they couldn't hold on to the basketball.
 
"I thought we got good looks until we started forcing it at the end," Huggins said.
 
West Virginia turned it over six times and missed all nine of its shot attempts during the final six minutes of the game.
 
In all, the Mountaineers turned it over 19 times and converted only 19 of their 60 shot attempts for 31.7 percent. In their last two defeats to Oklahoma and Kansas, West Virginia has missed a combined 99 of its 142 shot attempts – 32 of those coming from point-blank range.
 
"They surround the bigs because they know we are going to throw it in there because we can't make a perimeter shot," Huggins said of West Virginia's shooting woes. "You've got to make shots, man."
 
Devon Dotson, the Big 12's leading scorer averaging 18 points per game, led Kansas with 15, but Moss was the guy who really hurt West Virginia with 13 points off the bench – 10 of those coming in the second half.
 
Azubuike, who picked up two early fouls, contributed a pair of second half field goals and finished with six points and seven rebounds.
 
Marcus Garrett and Ochai Agbaji scored nine points each.
 
"They have two guys who when they are open can make shots, and we made a conscious effort to make sure those two guys didn't get jump shots. We wanted the other two guys shoot jump shots because they are not great jump shooters – they're drivers – but we let the wrong guys shoot and that kind of started it."
 
Oscar Tshiebwe led West Virginia with 14 points and nine rebounds, but as was the case the first time these two teams played in Lawrence when he went for 17 and 17, most of it came in the first half.
 
Tshiebwe picked up his third foul with 13:10 remaining and went to the bench to sit for the next five minutes. When he returned to the floor the Mountaineer lead had dwindled to three and quickly became one on an Azubuike dunk.
 
Sophomore guard Jordan McCabe was the only other Mountaineer player to reach double figures with 10.
 
West Virginia had a 38-27 advantage on the glass but Kansas (21-3, 10-1) outscored West Virginia 32-24 in the paint and 12-0 in fast break points.
 
Three of KU's four 3-point field goals came in the second half when the game flipped.
 
"We just got beat, that's all," Huggins said.
 
Tonight's victory was only the third for the Jayhawks at the Coliseum, making it the third time since West Virginia joined the Big 12 in 2012 that Kansas has swept the season series. It also happened in 2013 and 2018.
 
The loss was the Mountaineers' first defeat this season at the Coliseum after winning their first 12.
 
It doesn't get any easier for West Virginia now with a game looming at top-ranked Baylor on Saturday afternoon. The Bears improved to 22-1 overall and 11-0 in Big 12 play with a hard-fought 52-45 victory at Texas on Monday night.
 
Baylor's only loss this year was against Washington in the Armed Forces Classic in Anchorage, Alaska, back on Nov. 9.