MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia earned its third Big 12 Conference road victory of the season last Sunday at Cincinnati and will be seeking a fourth on Wednesday night at TCU.
 
WVU, a combined 2-25 in Big 12 road games over the prior three seasons, last won four or more league road games during the COVID year in 2021, which included a 74-66 triumph at TCU's Schollmaier Arena.
 
The Mountaineers (14-7, 5-5) have won six times there but have dropped their last two meetings in 2024 and 2023.
 
This year, TCU has 10 of its 11 wins at home, including last Sunday's 68-57 verdict over Big 12 bottom dweller Colorado to snap its three-game Big 12 losing streak.
 
The Horned Frogs, now 11-10 overall and 4-6 in conference play, show league wins over Kansas State, BYU, Baylor and Colorado and losses to Arizona, Houston, Utah, Kansas, UCF and Texas Tech. 
 
Utah and Kansas were each victorious in Fort Worth.
 
Veteran coach Jamie Dixon is in the middle of a significant rebuild this year that required him to replace nine scholarship players off last season's 21-win NCAA Tournament squad.
 
He brought in 10 new players, six transfers and four freshmen, in a recruiting class that was considered the 17^th best in the country by ESPN.com.
 
One of Dixon's top 100 freshman recruits, 6-foot-7 forward David Punch, scored a season-high 19 points in last Sunday's come-from-behind victory over the Buffaloes. The Harker Heights, Texas, resident made seven-of-10 from the floor, including three-of-three from 3-point range, to boost his season scoring average to 6.2 points per game.
 
TCU's other top 100 freshman recruit, 6-foot-6 forward Isaiah Manning from Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, has appeared in all 21 games and logged 11 minutes in the Colorado win.
 
Noah Reynolds, a 6-foot-3 guard who played last season at Green Bay, leads TCU with an average of 12.4 points per game. He was the only other Horned Frog to reach double figures with 11 against Colorado.
 
Vasean Allete, a 6-foot-2 Old Dominion transfer, is also averaging double figures at 11.1 points per outing. He replaced Arizona State transfer Frankie Collins in the starting lineup when Collins was lost for the season after breaking his left foot in the Vanderbilt loss in early December.
 
Dixon's other key players are former Kansas transfer Ernest Udeh Jr., the only returning contributor from last season, and 6-foot-8 Wyoming transfer Brendan Wenzel.
 
Udeh, a 6-foot-11 junior center, is averaging 7.0 points and a team-best 7.9 rebounds per game, while blocking a team-high 27 shots.
 
Wenzel shows averages of 8.7 points and 3.1 rebounds per game.
 
A key bench performer for TCU is 6-foot-6 senior forward Trazarien White, a UNC Wilmington product who has started 18 games and is averaging 8.9 points and 2.9 rebounds per contest.
 
TCU forced Colorado into 19 turnovers which resulted in 28 points, including 10 on fastbreaks.  The Horned Frogs also got 24 points from their bench.
 
"We did what we wanted to do," Dixon said afterward. "We wanted to force turnovers; that was something that we wanted to do, and we really talked about. I didn't want to get outrebounded like we did (34 to 22), but the turnover numbers alleviated some of the rebounding differential."
 
On the same day TCU was snapping its three-game Big 12 losing streak, West Virginia was doing likewise at Cincinnati.
 
The Mountaineers got 19 points from the conference's leading scorer Javon Small, while senior guard Joseph Yesufu came off the bench to contribute 16.
 
West Virginia completely smothered the Bearcats by limiting them to just 31.5% shooting and getting 20 points off of UC's 14 turnovers. WVU scored nearly half (30) of its 63 points in the paint, while ending its recent 3-point shooting woes by making nine of its 18 attempts.
 
Yesufu was four-for-four and Small was four-for-seven from 3-point land.
 
"I thought defensively, the guys came out with a good focus," West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said following the game. "We put a lot of stress on starting the game off better because we had dug ourselves such big holes that by the time we came out of it, it was too much."
 
In West Virginia's prior losses to Arizona State, Kansas State and Houston, WVU trailed by double digits in the first half. Against Cincinnati, it was reversed with the Mountaineers leading 40-25 at the break.
 
"Even when we made mistakes, I thought our connectivity of covering for one another was really good, and that led to some opportunities for our offense to get going," DeVries said.
 
WVU is 39^th in the most recent NCAA NET rankings while TCU checks in at 77^th. This will be one of three different trips to Texas in the next 18 days for the Mountaineers.
 
West Virginia owns an 18-7 overall advantage in the TCU series with all seven of its losses coming since Dixon took over. Dixon is now 7-9 versus West Virginia while with the Frogs and is 19-16 overall, which includes his long tenure at Pitt when both teams were playing in the Big East.
 
Television coverage for Wednesday night's game has been assigned to ESPN+ (Ted Emrich and Tim Welsh) and it will tip off at 8 p.m. ET.
 
Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage with Tony Caridi, Brad Howe and studio host David Kahn will get things started at 7 p.m. on stations throughout West Virginia, online via WVUsports.com and the Varsity Network and WVU Gameday apps.