Neal's deal: Five key items from West Virginia football
WVSports.com looks at the weekly press conference from West Virginia head coach Neal Brown and determines the five most interesting topics of discussion.
We examine what was said as well as what it means for the football team both this week and moving ahead as the Mountaineers navigate the 2023 schedule.
Next up a home contest against Oklahoma State (4-2).
1–Moving forward. Brown admitted that he has never lost a game that way in his head coaching career and it is certainly challenging. But overall, Houston deserved to win the game with how poorly the Mountaineers were in areas that have been critical for them to win football games up to that point.
West Virginia wasn’t disciplined with penalties and the Cougars were simply hungrier and won on both lines of scrimmage throughout the game. On special teams and defense the Mountaineers simply didn’t get things done and struggled across the board even simple things like alignment and assignment.
The best players in each of those phases didn’t play well and there were just instances of poor fundamentals throughout the course of the contest for most of those units. It simply wasn’t good enough and while offensively it was the best game of the year, the focus now is moving forward.
The Mountaineers have to take ownership for what unfolded and find the pathway for this team not to let this define their season. The team now must respond and come out on the other side.
West Virginia is 4-2, 2-1 overall and while Brown did answer questions and address what unfolded in the press conference, he made it clear that he was flipping the page. This would be the last time that he addressed the game as he wanted to focus on what was ahead against Oklahoma State. Brown believes that his team will indeed respond after the difficult matchup and is ready to move forward.
Related: ESPN FPI projections for the remaining games
2–Injuries. West Virginia is getting closer to being full strength with the Oklahoma State contest on tap. That’s because starting left tackle Wyatt Milum should return to the starting lineup after being poked in the eye against TCU. The defense also received some good news with starting free safety Aubrey Burks back at practice in a limited fashion although he still must go through protocol. The one player that has been ruled out at this stage is starting left guard Tomas Rimac as he isn’t expected to return until at least the Central Florida game Oct. 28 after his lower body being injured against TCU.
Others that continue to improve are running back Justin Johnson who did not even make the trip against Houston due to an illness that cost him a week of practice and linebacker Tirek Austin-Cave who had been out with a leg injury since fall camp but returned to practice this week.
3–Oklahoma State hitting their stride. Things won’t get any easier for West Virginia this weekend when Oklahoma State comes to town after back-to-back wins over ranked teams. The Cowboys have beaten both Kansas State and Kansas to sit at 4-2, 2-1 in the Big 12 after a very difficult start to the season where they were beaten 33-7 at home against South Alabama.
Since then, Oklahoma State has gone back and simplified what they are doing on offense and defense. It’s a team that has settled on a quarterback in Alan Bowman after playing several earlier in the year and is playing with a lot of confidence after rallying behind their head coach Mike Gundy.
On offense, this is going to be a team that wants to run the football with Ollie Gordon at running back emerging but are equipped with some weapons at wide receiver to stretch the field. Meanwhile, on the defensive side it’s a three-down look with three-safeties and they are playing fundamental football that has been able to create turnovers and play opportunistic. The cornerbacks could present a difficult matchup for West Virginia with how they play man coverage, but the Mountaineers have to win there.
4–Brown shoulders blame. The head coach said that he did a poor job when it came to measuring his team's level of maturity during the bye week as well as he should have. The Mountaineers played three physical games in a row prior to the bye week and Brown felt that by giving his team unstructured time off, they didn't handle it well and that spilled over into their performance on the field against Houston.
Brown is responsible for it all and he felt that he should have stuck with the original play on practicing hard on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of giving them time off due to the injuries on the roster. The focus moving forward is to make notes and avoid that it doesn't happen again in the future with his team.
5– On Hail Mary. Despite the need to move on, the final play of the Houston game is one that Brown addressed. West Virginia had their regular defense on the field with Houston having two plays remaining in the game instead of a traditional one play out of a dead ball Hail Mary attempt. The Mountaineers quit using offensive guys a few years ago on the defense of those plays due to some of the mistakes made at the professional level in those situations. West Virginia did have their best leapers and athletes in the game and bottom line is that those players just didn’t execute.
Brown admitted that if he could go anything over again, they would have pressured instead of just sending three but the best athletes were indeed on the field. But in the future they will practice that same scenario but they felt prepared.
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