WVSports.com continues with our popular feature: The 3-2-1. We'll breakdown 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—West Virginia closes on a high note. I don’t think I can say this enough. While you won’t be throwing any parades or building any statues over the 5-7 finish in the first season under new head coach Neal Brown, it deserves some major recognition. No, you’ll never celebrate a losing campaign but for all that had gone wrong this season with a laundry list of injuries to key players, some of which were season ending, and more players leaving the program since the spring it is an admirable close.

This team was already going to be without the majority of its production from a season ago due to graduation and then lost some of the players that were going to be counted on to step up such as Kenny Robinson, Derrek Pitts and Marcus Simms before things even began this fall. I came into the year, thinking that a 6-win season would be considered a major success in the first year under Brown and that was before any of those above departures or injuries came into play.

The Mountaineers won two of three down the stretch after a lifeless performance at home against Texas Tech and were very much in the only defeat to Oklahoma State. The program scored a signature win on the road at Kansas State and then was able to rise up and deny a TCU game motivated for an appearance to a bowl game for the 15th time in the 18 seasons under Gary Patterson. That game to close the year, was critical, because it helped show that Brown certainly has his team in the right ways. So often, we’ve seen the Mountaineers crumble in end of the year scenarios over the last eight years and this team had quite literally nothing to play for but pride and a springboard into the off-season and was able to go on the road and get it done as a double-digit underdog.