Ten days after forcing 40 turnovers in a 40-minute game and winning by 47, No. 15 West Virginia forced 34 turnovers and won by 53. Western Carolina, a road-weary team that’s simply not good enough to do what it’s attempting to do, made the the trip to Charleston without its starting point guard.

It went poorly.

Western Carolina had three stretches throughout the game where it went five minutes or more without a field goal.

“We don’t let people run offense, we make people play,” WVU coach Bob Huggins said. “They run really good stuff, we just don’t let people get into it. Everybody is to the point where they’ve seen other people turn it over and you don’t want to turn it over, you want to take care of the ball. It’s hard to run offense when you’re constantly throwing the ball backward.”

The Catamounts — check that … — scored 37 points. WVU outscored its opponent in points off turnovers 37-0.

The crowd was again not great and checked in at the 8,000 level for the fourth time in six games at the Civic Center.

Part of the problem is the competition, and if WVU, coming off the Virginia win, can’t get more people into the gym, it might not be the Mountaineers. It might be the dregs on the other side. It seems highly unlikely that WVU is going to draw there without Marshall or a reputable opponent on the same hardwood. And why would a reputable opponent play at the Civic Center?

I think in the past you could have argued that the Mountaineers didn’t play a particularly pleasing style of basketball. Virginia is a very good team. It doesn’t play an exciting brand of basketball. WVU is very good. It plays an exciting brand, but is it a purist’s delight? A lot of these November and December games are muggings against teams that don’t have the time or the talent to prepare for the press. Fouls and free throws don’t move the meter. WVU wasn’t shooting the ball all that well or running a lot of offense.

That seems to be changing. The shooting percentages are up from the floor and from 3-point range, and, believe it or not, the Mountaineers aren’t fouling.

Last season, in 35 games, West Virginia committed 822 personal fouls. That’s an average of 23.5 per game.

On Wednesday, WVU committed 13. And some of those fouls came in garbage time.

On the season, West Virginia has committed a total of 148 fouls over eight games. That’s an average of 18.5 – or an average of five fewer fouls per game.

“I know, right?” said WVU guard Teyvon Myers. “We probably had three fouls with six minutes left in the first half and Jevon Carter looked at me on the bench and said, ‘You know, we would have been in the double bonus last year at this time.’”

Without question. It’s a problem that’s plagued the Mountaineers ever since the inception of “Press Virginia.” And, yes, WVU is playing a fair amount of overmatched cupcakes this season. Yet teams like Illinois, Temple and Virginia have been in there as well.

My questions: Have officials finally become accustomed to West Virginia’s style? Are the Mountaineers giving more space between defender and ballhandler?

“We’ve just been trying to keep our hands out,” Myers said. “We’ve been working on it in practice. We’re not giving more space. Fouling just leads to the treadmill in practice — and no one wants to be on the treadmill.”