John Flowers came off the bench to score 13 points and No. 8 West Virginia never trailed in a 69-50 win over The Citadel on Tuesday night.
Kevin Jones added 11 points and Darrell Bryant and Casey Mitchell had 10 apiece for West Virginia (2-0).
Cameron Wells scored 19 points for The Citadel (3-3), which played for the fourth time in five days.
West Virginia (2-0) showed signs of lapses on both ends of the court coming off a nine-day layoff. The Citadel's crisp 3-point shooting kept West Virginia from making the game a rout until the end.
Flowers followed a 3-pointer with a basket and free throw, and Joe Mazzulla made a layup to put the Mountaineers ahead, 53-34, with 11:32 remaining in the game. The Citadel got no closer than 14 the rest of the way and fell to 0-31 against ranked opponents.
Bob Huggins earned his 641st coaching win, tying him with Billy Tubbs for 24th place on the NCAA Division I all-time list.
West Virginia entered the night with the fewest games played among ranked teams, but that's about to change. The Mountaineers have three games in four days starting Thursday night at the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif.
Leaving Morgantown suits Huggins just fine. More than half of his 51 wins at WVU have come away from home.
Huggins welcomed back two players that missed all or part of West Virginia's 23-point win last week over Loyola, Md., although star Devin Ebanks wasn't among them.
Ebanks sat out the opener for what Huggins called undisclosed personal issues. Ebanks dressed for Tuesday night's game but did not play.
Flowers returned from a foot injury and made 5-of-8 shots in 22 minutes.
Mazzulla, a backup guard, saw his first action since last December after missing the Big East season with a sore left shoulder.
Da'Sean Butler, who scored 26 against Loyola, had seven in the first half against the Bulldogs but was held to nine for the game on 4-of-11 shooting.
Unlike its season opener, the Mountaineers took control early, jumping ahead by double digits seven minutes into the game.
Seven different players scored for West Virginia in the game's first nine minutes. The Citadel went more than seven minutes between baskets and the Mountaineers built a 23-7 lead midway through the first half.
Five of The Citadel's eight first-half baskets were 3-pointers and the Bulldogs trailed at halftime 33-24.
