MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia used 23 points and 10 assists from Javon Small to defeat TCU 73-55 Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
 
With tonight's victory, the Mountaineers moved into a three-way tie with TCU and Baylor in seventh place in the Big 12 standings with 8-9 conference records.
 
The Bears lost at Cincinnati earlier tonight.
 
Here in Morgantown, West Virginia held TCU scoreless for an eight-minute stretch that saw the Mountaineers outscore the Horned Frogs 18-0. TCU, which got the first five points of the game, didn't make its third field goal until Brendan Wenzel's jumper with 9:32 remaining in the half.
 
West Virginia had its biggest lead with 2:08 left, 42-20, before the Horned Frogs closed out the half on a 7-0 run.
 
TCU's Trazarien White began the second half with a 3, but West Virginia answered with a 10-3 run to build its lead back to 19, 52-33.
 
WVU got the margin back to 20 on a Small 3, but the Horned Frogs forced turnovers on four straight possessions to get it down to nine, 62-53, with five minutes remaining.
 
Again, Small answered with a jumper, and then Joseph Yesufu added a 3 from the corner to make it a 14-point lead.
 
Yesufu tallied 14 and Sencire Harris added a season-high 13 for the Mountaineers, now 17-11 overall.
 
"I was really pleased, especially defensively," West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said. "We put a full 40 minutes together that I thought was really good. In that first half, I thought that looked like us earlier this year. We were getting stops and getting out and running."
 
West Virginia shot 51.9% overall, connecting on 27 of its 52 field goal attempts, while also making 11 of 26 from 3-point distance for 42.3%.
 
Small was eight-of-16 from the floor and produced his third double-double for the season. Small has scored 20 or more points in a game 12 times this year, seven of those coming in conference play. His 10 assists tonight were a season high.
 
"I thought he was terrific," DeVries said. "We've got to continue to have him be aggressive, whether it be scoring or assisting. He has 23 (points) and 10 (assists), and we're putting a lot on him. And we're also going to ask him to guard one of their best players. That's the type of player he is."
 
White was the only TCU player to reach double figures with 11 points.
 
In the first meeting in Fort Worth earlier this month, Vasean Allette and Noah Reynolds combined to score 42 points in a 65-60 Horned Frog victory. Tonight, the pair were limited to just 10 on a combined two-of-nine shooting.
 
"I thought our guys did a much better job on them," DeVries said. "At their place, we were being aggressive, but almost too aggressive at times. They were getting downhill, our gap-help wasn't where it needed to be, and they got to the free throw line a lot. I thought the bigs were good, too, of giving us good support on a lot of their ball screens."
 
Overall, TCU (15-13) shot just 39.2% and had one fewer rebound than West Virginia's 29 boards. The Mountaineers are now 10-0 this season when outboarding their opponents. Yesufu, West Virginia's 6-foot guard, took top honors with six rebounds.
 
"That's pretty simple math, so let's just keep doing that," DeVries said of his team's work on the glass. 
 
The announced attendance was 10,167.
 
Tonight's win keeps West Virginia on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. Bracketologists had the Mountaineers as a 10-seed for this year's tournament heading into this week's action.
 
WVU returns to the road for a two-game western swing at 25^th-ranked BYU on Saturday night and then a Tuesday night game at Utah, now being coached on an interim basis by Josh Eilert, West Virginia's interim coach last season.
 
Utah fired fourth-year coach Craig Smith yesterday with four regular season games remaining.
 
The Mountaineers conclude the regular season at the WVU Coliseum on Saturday, March 8 against UCF.