WVU Chance Moore drives past Baylor defenders.

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s 16-game home winning streak came to an unceremonious and difficult end on Saturday.

Of course, it had to be against Baylor. It makes all the sense in the world that Bears’ head coach Scott Drew was on the opposite sideline. Drew has darned near built a career out of winning inside Hope Coliseum, improving his mark here to 9-4 following Baylor’s 63-53 victory.

His secret?

“A lot of prayer, man,” Drew said with a smile. “This is a tough place to play. I can tell you one thing, though, every year we come here the hospitality has been genuine and tremendous. That goes anywhere from the hotel to when we first enter here. It’s as good as anywhere.”

The last time Baylor dropped a game in Morgantown, the world was just beginning to hear about COVID-19 and there was no such thing as NIL in college athletics.

Baylor (12-9, 2-7 Big 12) has now won eight in a row against the Mountaineers (14-8, 5-4), with five of those wins coming in Morgantown.

“I want to give coach Drew and his team a ton of credit,” WVU head coach Ross Hodge said. “I thought they started the game with a higher sense of urgency and competitive spirit.”

As far as being hospitable, the Mountaineers were just that. That included falling behind 15-5 in the early stages of the game – “We dug ourselves a hole, which has now started to kind of become a little bit of a trend the last four games,” Hodge said. – and then went nearly eight minutes of the second half without scoring a single point.

Then again, Baylor, which had lost four straight games entering Saturday, wasn’t having much success either. The Bears’ lead was 47-44 after WVU forward Chance Moore picked up a loose ball and hit a turnaround jumper as the shot clock was about to expire.

There was still 11:35 left in the game at that point. By the time the next basket was scored by either team – Baylor’s Caden Powell did manage a couple of free throws at the 9:02 mark – one could have gone out and ran a couple of laps around the arena, came back in to buy a slice of pizza and a Coke and sat back down in their seat without missing a thing.

“Coach said we had eight empty possessions,” said WVU guard Treysen Eaglestaff, who finished with nine points on 3 of 7 shooting. “That second half, we were down by a little bit, but no one was scoring. We just couldn’t get over that hump.”

When it came time for anyone to step up in the clutch, the call was finally answered by Baylor point guard Obi Agbim, who nailed two big-time 3-pointers in the span of 90 seconds to give the Bears a comfortable 57-49 edge with 2:08 remaining.

Agbim finished with 16 points and four assists.

“We got Obi some good looks. He made a couple,” Drew said.

WVU, which now travels to Cincinnati on Thursday, closed out the game missing four shots and turned the ball over twice to put the final nail in the coffin of what was the third-longest home winning streak among Power Four Conference teams. Only Duke (27) and Arkansas (17) have had more recent success in home games.

WVU’s streak actually began last season under former head coach Darian DeVries. Hodge had won 13 in a row.

“It’s disappointing anytime you lose at home,” Hodge said. “We take a lot of pride in protecting this place. The fans tried everything they could to get us in that game. They tried to will us back into it.”

WVU’s misfires were plentiful. Leading scorer Honor Huff finished 1 of 13 shooting and WVU was held to just 36% (18 of 50) from the floor.

Baylor guard Cameron Carr – a projected first-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft – did show up and finished with 16 points and 12 rebounds, but also finished with a game-high seven turnovers.

“His length and his ability to go to the glass was huge,” Drew said. “I think he was trying to get a triple-double, but I’ve got to make sure he knows that turnovers don’t count.

“He played really hard. That’s why, I guess, he was throwing up in the locker room. As a coach, you want guys playing as hard as they can and leaving it all out there and he did that today.”