WVSports.com continues with our popular feature: The 3-2-1. We'll break down three things we learned that week, two questions we have and give one prediction.
Here is the next installment of the 3-2-1 looking at the West Virginia football program, the latest on basketball and what’s happening in recruiting.
3 things I learned:
1–The wait is over. After what seems like months and months of waiting for the smallest glimmer of hope, West Virginia will play a college football game this coming weekend against No. 8 Penn State.
The Nittany Lions will come to Morgantown to take on a Mountaineers football team that is looking to build off a nine-win season and take the next step under head coach Neal Brown in his sixth season. This is a veteran football team that returns a lot of key pieces from a season ago and isn't going to have the chance to ease into things.
That's because Penn State is a popular playoff pick in the pre-season and will present one of the marquee matchups of the entire week one college football schedule.
The game will be televised as a Big Noon Kickoff on FOX and the Mountaineers have a chance to host a top ten team at home where a win would be a massive statement not only for the program itself but the entire Big 12 Conference.
This should be an incredible atmosphere on campus and is arguably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, of the Brown era to this point. You don't get a lot of opportunities like this at home with a chance to announce yourself to the rest of the college football world and that's exactly what is within reach for this football team.
The Mountaineers spent the entire off-season discussing how they felt disrespected by the talk about the team as well as where it was slotted in the Big 12 media poll. Well, this is a golden opportunity against a very good team to show it.
2–Transfer portal windows in place. It's a long way off at this point and the focus is clearly on the upcoming season but we now know what the transfer portal windows are going to look like for the off-season.
