MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — Did anyone get the license number of that Carr that ran over West Virginia in the Coliseum on Saturday night?

It had Texas plates, but the only number you could see was 5, although there were some other numbers that played a part in what became a 69-61 victory for the Texas Longhorns over West Virginia before a screaming, often incensed Mountaineer crowd of 14,141 fans in the Coliseum.

When they ran it through the computer, it spit out that it was a Marcus Carr who was responsible for the Mountaineers' sixth loss against one lonely victory in Big 12 play while the No. 7 Longhorns ran their record to 16-3 and 5-2 in the conference.

Back to Carr, who stayed well within the speed limit in the first half, scoring just four points as WVU went to park itself in the locker room with a 28-26 halftime lead.

But when they came out for the second half, it turned out to be a demolition derby, and the last Carr standing was Marcus, who hit 6 of 8 shots, 5 of 6 free throws, scored 19 of his 23 points for the game and basically did whatever he wanted to do in a half in which WVU could find neither a stop sign nor a red light to bring him to a halt.

"We just did a bad job," coach Bob Huggins said. "He's a right-handed guy who loves to go to his right. We didn't want him to go to the right. We wanted to force him to the baseline and swallow him up with our size, but we let him go wherever he wanted.

"We did pretty much everything opposite of what we planned to do; what we drilled to do as much as you can drill on a day's rest."

They couldn't stop him, even when he put on his turn signal.

A transfer from Minnesota a year ago, Carr is sixth in the Big 12 in scoring, averaging 17.11 points a game coming in.

What WVU did in the first half worked. But at halftime, he must have gotten an oil change and rotated his tires, for his wheels were squealing from the moment he hit a 3 right out of the gate in the second half to give Texas a 29-28 lead.

West Virginia came back and built a 5-point lead in the half, but Carr and his inside buddy, Christian Bishop, who hit 5 of 9 shots and scored 11 points with a number of dispiriting slam dunks, would take advantage of some incredibly sloppy play by the Mountaineers.

There were 20 turnovers, some of them on something as simple as just trying to get the ball in bounds at crucial moments, others when they simply dropped passes or had them taken away.

It reached such a point of frustration that Huggins, who never has been known for being an unemotional type, was screaming at Mo Wague so loudly during a timeout when he picked up his third foul in 3 minutes and 23 seconds of action, turning the ball over, that he could be distinctly heard over the music and crowd noise all the way up in press row.

And that is located on the entry level of the Coliseum.

It came after the last game, when Huggins bounced things on the scorers' table when he slammed his fist down in anger.

If there are levels of frustration, this is reaching its limit for the veteran Hall of Fame coach.

"I don't know the difference between frustration, disappointment and the guilt of telling people that we're going to fix this then turn around and do this," Huggins said when asked about it. "I'm not exactly sure what that's called. I don't care for it much, whatever it is you call it. I guess frustration is a part of it."

Despite it all, WVU hung in there with Texas.

"We had opportunities. We had opportunities in other games that we've lost, too. We didn't seize those opportunities," Huggins said.

The recipe for disaster was the same as it was earlier in the season, those 20 turnovers and missed free throws.

"What kills me is I sat here and said, 'We'll fix it.' The people in the state of West Virginia, I told them that we'll fix it, and I thought we were on that road to fixing it. Obviously, we're not. It's frustrating. I'm not the kind of person who wants to let people down.

"It hurts me to let people down. I feel like I've let the great fans in this state down. "We had 14,100 here. To play like that. I would have thought we would be jacked up. I didn't see a lot of emotion or enthusiasm."

The turning point in the game came when a technical foul was called on Texas' Sir'Jabari Rice, sending Keddy Johnson to the free throw line with a chance to tie the game. It was reasonable to assume he would, having made 22 in a row as he stepped to the line.

He missed both.

"You can't make them all," he shrugged.

From that point on, Texas was in control of things. Johnson tried to atone for the misses, hitting a basket at 4:23 to bring the Mountaineers to within five points ... but it would be their last field goal of the game.

From there, they just ran out of gas while Carr just kept on chugging along.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Kedrian Johnson scored 20 points and West Virginia built a big early lead and outlasted No. 14 TCU 74-65 on Wednesday night.

Jimmy Bell Jr. added 15 points and 12 rebounds for West Virginia (11-7, 1-5 Big 12), whose players slapped hands with the student section after breaking a five-game losing streak.

Mike Miles Jr. scored 21 points while Emanuel Miller and Damion Baugh had 13 apiece for TCU (14-4, 3-3), which has lost three of its last four after starting the season 13-1.

After a lackluster first half, the Horned Frogs made it interesting toward the end.

Down 17 with 11 minutes remaining, TCU sank eight free throws during a 13-2 run. Miles then hit a 3-pointer and an ensuing free throw after getting fouled, and Jakobe Coles made layups on back-to-back possessions to pull the Horned Frogs within 62-60 with 5:17 left.

But TCU made just two field goals over the final five minutes and West Virginia never relinquished the lead.

The Mountaineers' Erik Stevenson scored nine points in the first half but earned a seat on the bench for much of the second half and got an earful from coach Bob Huggins for defensive lapses and four turnovers. After returning, Stevenson fed Bell for a dunk, then grabbed a defensive rebound that Joe Toussaint turned into a layup for a 68-60 lead with 3:07 left.

West Virginia started with one of its best efforts all season, making 9 of its first 14 shots and racing to a 28-12 lead. The Mountaineers, guilty too often this season of one-pass possessions, made crisp passes on offense and clogged the paint on defense, while TCU was unable to get its transition offense on track until it was too late.

TCU trailed 39-24 at halftime, its lowest first-half scoring output of the season.

BIG PICTURE

TCU: The Horned Frogs fell to 0-11 all-time in Morgantown.

West Virginia: The Mountaineers played like they were fed up with their losing streak, outrebounding TCU 31-18. After shooting 61% from the free-throw line over their last five games, West Virginia went 20 of 26 (77%) on Wednesday.

UP NEXT

TCU plays at No. 2 Kansas on Saturday.

West Virginia hosts No. 7 Texas on Saturday.

AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top2

Baylor and West Virginia each came into Wednesday’s Big 12 clash at the WVU Coliseum desperately searching for a league victory.

Both had started off conference play 0-3 despite going right down to the wire in most of those losses.

Only one was going to get off the schneid, though, and that turned out to be BU, which outlasted the Mountaineers in snatching an 83-78 win.

WVU is now 10-6 overall, as well as 0-4 in the Big 12. The Bears, who had lost their previous two games by a total of three points, are 11-5 and 1-3.

“It was another Big 12 game that came down to one or two possessions,” noted Baylor head coach Scott Drew, whose Bears won the NCAA title two years ago. “We’ve been on the short end of the last couple, so we’re grateful to God that we could get a victory tonight.”

After struggling to hit shots in Saturday’s 76-62 loss to Kansas, when it made just 35% of its field goal attempts and only 20% of its 3-point tries, West Virginia’s subpar offensive trend continued in the first half against Baylor. WVU managed to convert just 32.3% of its shots (10 of 31) and was a mere 1 of 12 from 3-point range (8.3%) in the opening 20 minutes. The Bears were better in that stint (44% on FGs and 46% on 3s) and took a 33-27 lead into halftime.

The Mountaineers finally found their offensive stroke in the second half, though. They erased the BU lead in the initial eight minutes of the second period, and from there, the battle was on. The two combatants exchanged the lead eight times, and it was tied six times over the next nine minutes. A 6-0 Bear run in the final few minutes gave the visitors an advantage they wouldn’t relinquish, though West Virginia had the Baylor lead down to 80-78 with 11 seconds remaining. After a bucket, WVU couldn’t get the turnover it needed on the ensuing inbound pass. Instead, Baylor’s fantastic freshman, Keyonte George, who had 32 points, got the ball and was quickly fouled. He made just one of his two free throws, though, leaving the door open for the Mountaineers, who were down three. WVU guard Joe Toussaint hustled the ball up the court, but his 3-point attempt to tie the game banged off the rim, and with it went West Virginia’s chance of a victory.

“Whoever gets the open look takes the shot,” explained Toussaint of the chance to tie the game with five seconds remaining. “I probably should have penetrated and got to the rim. I scored about anytime I penetrated, so I probably should have done that.”

Toussaint led the Mountaineers’ scoring effort with his season-high 20 points. Teammate Tre Mitchell added 14 points and 15 rebounds. That’s the most boards by a WVU player, outside of Derek Culver and Oscar Tshiebwe, since 2016.

Those performances allowed West Virginia to stay close to Baylor, which started the season ranked No. 5 in the country, but it wasn’t quite enough to lift WVU to its first Big 12 win of the year.

“Our effort was definitely much better than past games; it still was not up to par, but it was definitely better than past games,” stated Toussaint.

“It’s the little things,” noted the junior guard who transferred from Iowa to West Virginia last summer. “We have to tighten up on those things. Once we do, I think we’ll be fine and will be right back in the win column.”

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — And the beat goes on.

So do the beatings for West Virginia. In a taut, tense, physical battle between two teams looking for their first Big 12 victory that went into the closing minute, the Baylor Bears made the big shots and the big plays when they needed to defeat West Virginia, 83-76, before 11,815 fans.

The loss was the Mountaineers’ fourth in a row as they fell to 0-4 in the conference while Baylor, just two years removed from winning the national championship, won the championship of the winless, going to 1-3 in a Big 12 conference where every game seems to play out the same way.

“That’s another Big 12 (game) that’s one or two possessions,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “We’ve been on the short end the last couple, so it feels really good to get a victory here.”

For WVU, it was just another pain in the pit of the stomach.

The Mountaineers did a lot of things that could have turned the game into a win, but at crunch time, there was always something biting them in the buttocks.

Joe Toussaint, who came off the bench to score 20 points, and Seth Wilson called them “little mistakes.”

“We have to be mentally sharp. We do that every game. We go on these mini-runs and someone messes up. We miss a block out. We miss assignments. It’s not right,” Toussaint said.

There, of course, are some big things, like allowing Baylor guard Keyonte George to score 32 points on 10-of-18 shooting, 5 of 9 from 3-point range, and allowing Jalen Bridges on his return to the Coliseum to put up a double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds while being the night-long target of the student section’s disaffection.

Yeah, there are some big things, as coach Bob Huggins pointed out.

“We can’t contain,” Huggins said. “We’ve got to be able to finish around the rim. Seemingly, other people do and we don’t. We can’t keep missing free throws, and we can’t keep turning the ball over, although we were better at that tonight.

“But when you’re going to be close in every game, you can’t afford those kinds of mistakes.”

The thing is, WVU also does some good things. Tre Mitchell put together a double-double with 14 points and 15 rebounds. Toussaint had his 20. Wilson made 4 of 7 shots. And after a dreadful first half in which it scored 27 points, WVU put 51 on the board in the second.

But you can’t win where your starting guards — Stevenson and Kedrian Johnson — can’t make a shot. Over the past two games, Stevenson is 7 for 28 from the field and 2 of 12 from three while Johnson, who suffered a concussion last time out, is 2 of 25 over the past three games — 8% from the field with 2 of 10 from 3.

Ever had one of those days where, from the moment you poked your head out from under the covers, everything went wrong?

West Virginia did on Wednesday night at the Coliseum.

The evening started more than an hour before game time when the Mountaineers learned that their appeal to get Manhattan transfer Jose Perez eligible for the rest of this season was turned down by the NCAA, costing them a scorer they really needed.

Things, you would think, would get better with the singing of the National Anthem, but no, the microphone the singer had in his hands was as dead as the Mountaineers. He started, no sound. Tried again, no sound.

This, at least, turned into a poignant moment and maybe even one they ought to introduce as a tradition, for the entire crowd began singing the anthem ... on key, and it turned into a warm, moving moment.

Not so with the game. When you have two teams meeting at 0-3, like Baylor and WVU, you don’t expect perfection. These guys, however, were perfecting imperfection.

Stevenson, coming off a 4-of-19 shooting game against Kansas, took the first shot for WVU ... and missed. By halftime, it was obvious that he had not worked out his shooting problems, laying a 1 for 6 atop that 4 for 19.

And so it went, the Mountaineers unable to make shots. They went 1 for 12 from 3-point range in the first half and found themselves trailing, 33-27, as they went to the locker room. On the bright side, they had assists on eight of their 10 baskets while turning the ball over only three times.

Don’t know what the halftime refreshments were, but WVU’s shooting eye cleared up.

Even Stevenson threw up the first shot of the second half, a 3, and nailed it. Before five minutes in the half were gone, Joe Toussaint also had hit a 3, as had Seth Wilson.

Not that it mattered, because the defense did nothing to stop Keyonte George and Co. George soared past 20 points scored before 5 minutes were gone, and Baylor had its lead up to 46-40.

WVU brought it back down to a point before matters got physical, players bouncing into and off one another and the officials having to step in to make sure this didn’t escalate as Kedrian Johnson and Dale Bonner did some serious bumping.

The officials called it a double foul, one each on Bonner and Kedrian Johnson.

Meanwhile, the fans were all over the one-time Mountaineer Bridges, shouting “Traitor, Traitor” as he came out of the locker room to warm up and riding him at every turn.

Bridges handled it well.

“I was here for three years and knew how it is on the opposition when they come,” he said. “This is one of the best atmospheres in college basketball.”

WVU rallied in the second half, had the lead at 67-66 on Stevenson’s lone 3 with 3 minutes to go but could not contain the Baylor guards as they pulled away late hitting free throws.