Vasean Allette scored 22 points and Noah Reynolds added 20 to lead TCU to a 65-60 victory over West Virginia tonight at Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
 
The Horned Frogs, one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the country, took advantage of a big free throw disparity to turn a 12-point first half deficit into their second straight home victory after topping Colorado last Sunday.
 
Shooting just 63.3% from the charity stripe this season, TCU made 20 of 23 tonight compared to only two of five for the Mountaineers, whose 18 fouls were twice as many as the nine called on the Frogs.
 
"We've got to play without fouling," West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said.
 
WVU went cold toward the latter part of the first half after Toby Okani's dunk gave it a 25-13 lead with 6:08 remaining. TCU used a 15-4 run to finish the first half trailing 29-28 and then scored the first seven points of the second half before Eduardo Andre's dunk finally ended the cold spell.
 
"We started the game off, and I thought defensively we were terrific for the first 15 minutes," DeVries said. "I told them going into the four-minute timeout that they worked their tails off to get this lead, don't let them crawl back into it. We had some silly turnovers, gave up a few easy buckets and now you are up one at the end of the half instead of 10, 12 or 13."
 
TCU's biggest lead was 11, 54-43, with 7:56 remaining when Javon Small caught fire and scored eight straight points to get it back to a one-point game, 54-53.
 
Jonathan Powell's 3 with 3:53 left tied it at 56, and then Small's steal and layup knotted the score at 58 with 1:29 to go.
 
Allette answered with a layup and a free throw when he was fouled by KJ Tenner.
 
Small was unable to get his long step-back jumper to go down, Micah Robinson was unsuccessful at the other end, but Allette grabbed the offensive rebound and scored with nine seconds left to make it a two-possession game.
 
Allette added two free throws with three seconds left and then TCU conceded Joe Yesufu's layup ahead of the horn.
 
"Once we got our defense going again, I thought we were pretty good," DeVries said. "We got better ball movement, Javon got going a little bit and Joe made a couple of 3s when we became the aggressor, but we were unable to finish it off."
 
Small finished with 20, getting equal point distribution in both halves. He finished eight of 19 from the floor and was four of 10 from 3-point range.
 
Yesufu contributed 11 and Andre added 10 for the Mountaineers, now 14-8 overall and 5-6 in Big 12 play.
 
TCU (12-10, 5-6) had a 34 to 26 advantage on the glass, including 11 offensive rebounds. The Fogs made half of their 22 field goal attempts in the second half after shooting just 35.7% in the first half.
 
"The first half they shoot 35% and the second half they shoot 50, and that's the game," DeVries explained. "We have to defend. We got down 11 and cranked it back up again and crawl back into it and tie the game, but you put yourself in that position and now it's who can make the most plays in the last few minutes? And they did."
 
TCU coach Jamie Dixon, now 20-16 in games played against West Virginia, earned his 500^th career victory tonight. WVU has now dropped seven of its last eight games at Schollmaier Arena with its last victory coming in 2021. These two teams will meet again in Morgantown on Tuesday, February. 25.
 
The Mountaineers are back in the WVU Coliseum on Saturday to face Utah in a special 5 p.m. tip that will be televised on ESPN+.