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 is home matchup with Cincinnati coming off a loss to Oklahoma to drop the overall record to 6-4, 4-3 in the Big 12 with two games remaining.
1—Flush it and go. West Virginia played their worst football game of the season on the road at Oklahoma, and it was something that quite frankly caught Brown and his staff by surprise. The Mountaineers had practiced and prepared well leading up to the game but were thoroughly beaten by the Sooners 59-20 in a game that for all intents and purposes wasn’t even that close. The good news is that West Virginia has another game coming up and the focus was putting this one behind them.
For the second time this season, the Mountaineers switched up their practice schedule in order to flush this one out by practicing Sunday instead of the typical Monday routine. The focus was working on the things that West Virginia struggled with in the 59-20 loss to Oklahoma because the expectation is that the remaining teams on the schedule are going to use some of those moving forward. The Mountaineers put that game to rest and worked on cleaning up their mistakes, with practice set to resume Tuesday.
Brown has zero doubt that his team will bounce back and play well at home and points to the fact that this has been a resilient group after difficult outcomes all season. He expects that to continue.
2—Injury updates. Brown said that both starting running back CJ Donaldson and starting right tackle Doug Nester did not practice Sunday after both left early with injuries against Oklahoma. Now, that isn’t surprising with the first practice normally not occurring until Monday before the coaching staff moved it up a day. At this stage, it’s unclear if either will play this weekend but Brown believes that he should now more as the week progresses on that front. It’s obviously a major boost if both are in the lineup, but the Mountaineers do have depth at running back with true freshman Jaheim White and junior Justin Johnson, while they have already played this season without Nester as Nick Malone filled in admirably.
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Outside of those two the rest of the team is healthy heading into the matchup with Cincinnati, which is a good thing considering the point of the season that we’ve arrived at with only two games left.
3—Beaten up front. One area that West Virginia has had an edge almost all season has been with their offensive line and that simply wasn’t the case against the Sooners. Yes, the offense extended their streak of rushing for 140+ yards to 13 games and didn’t allow a sack, but struggled to get the push and physicality that has come to define this team on that side of the ball. The Sooners did some things moving their defensive line and with stunts to negate what the Mountaineers did early and were able to get more penetration than anybody else on the schedule has been able to do.
On the defensive side, the Sooners were able to get movement up front and controlled the line of scrimmage. Those are areas that have to get better in a hurry against a Cincinnati team that’s strength is stopping the run and running the football on the other side of the ball. The Bearcats have a very stout defensive line with the strength being the interior, while they will rely on outside zone as the bread and butter of their offense on the ground. West Virginia expects to see the Bearcats use some of the same things that Oklahoma had success with and it’s imperative for the fronts to get back on track.
4—Cincinnati series has potential. West Virginia hasn’t had any team in the Big 12 Conference become a rival and for the most part hasn’t really had one even come close. That’s a natural consequence of being hundreds of miles from the closest school and not much, if any, interaction with those opposing fan bases outside of gamedays. That isn’t necessarily the case anymore with Cincinnati joining the league and finding their way back on the Mountaineers football schedule. The two played annually as members of the Big East from 2005-2011 and while it never developed into a rivalry, there were certainly some exciting games played between the two with both playing at a high level during that stretch.
It is by far the closest school in proximity to the Mountaineers being around five hours away and while it won’t happen overnight there is some real potential for this series to continue to blossom between the two when it comes to being a significant game on the schedule. Both fan bases should be able to travel back-and-forth between the two locations and is on the schedule at least three more times over the next four years to throw some continuity onto the matchup as well.
You can’t force a rivalry game and perhaps nothing ever comes of this matchup in the grand scheme of things, but sharing some actual proximity and some history the potential is there. Now, it takes some good games and back and forth to really establish some things, but at least there is hope when it comes to the Mountaineers potentially having a game that they could truly circle each year.
5—Passing game has to improve. Against Oklahoma starting quarterback Garrett Greene played his worst game of the season completing just 10-27 passes in the process. Some of that isn’t just on his shoulders however, as there were around five drops in the game, but Greene has to improve. It’s the same fundamental issues that Greene got away with against BYU but did not against the Sooners.
The biggest issues have been Greene getting his body aligned correctly and avoiding falling off to the left when he throws the football. He is well-aware of the issues and understands that if he wants to be better than a 50-percent passer, he needs to take the steps to correct those in-game because there were open wide receivers that the Mountaineers simply didn’t hit or didn’t see.
So as part of that Brown plans to thin down even further an already thin collection of passing plays to focus on the ones that are the best fit for Greene and the ones that he can see the best. Brown spent most of the early portion of the day Monday sorting through the plays that Greene operates well and the focus will be on giving every possible look to those pass plays that he could see.
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