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 2024 schedule.
Next up is the season opener against No. 8 Penn State.
1—Brown eager to see team in action. After a physical fall camp where West Virginia challenged the team in all aspects, the head man is ready to see what it looks like on the field against a very good Penn State club. The Nittany Lions are perched at No. 8 nationally and will be a massive task for this team to start the year, but West Virginia is at the point where you truly don’t know where you stand until you play a game. Fortunately, the Mountaineers stayed relatively healthy throughout fall camp but now it’s time for them to see where they stack up playing their brand of physical football with a chip on their shoulders.
Brown of course has things that he feels good about and some question marks, although he didn’t point any of those out, but the Mountaineers plan to use the rest of this week to prepare.
“I feel really good about it. I like the leadership on our team. We’re going to have a good football team, and we’ve worked a long time to be able to peak at the right time and that’s the hope,” Brown said.
2—New coordinators mean challenges. Penn State features not one, not two but three new coordinators in each of the phases of the game this season and with that comes a bit of a guessing game in terms of what the Nittany Lions will be doing. Now make no mistake about it, that is always the case in a week one game even if nothing changes but this means a lot of piecing things together.
West Virginia believes they will see a bit of a mix starting with learning the personnel and the strengths and weaknesses, then recognizing some of the things that Penn State has done in the past. From there, the coaches will try to look at a mix of what the Nittany Lions have done along with some of the new things that those coordinators will bring to the table from their previous stops. But overall, it’s a lot of guesswork.
On offense, Andy Kotelnicki takes the job after his time at Kansas and before that, he was at Buffalo. It’s a coach that Brown has squared off against in the past and to prepare the Mountaineers will be watching a lot of Kansas tape along with what Penn State did last season to get an idea on personnel.
Tom Allen takes over the defense and inherits a sizeable chunk of talent and is an experienced defensive mind. While the special teams coordinator is Justin Lustig who comes over from Vanderbilt and is very well respected with what he has been able to do in that third phase.
3— West Virginia will evolve, too. As mentioned above, teams change every single year regardless of how many players come back or even if there is complete continuity with the coaching staff. That will be no different with the Mountaineers in all three of their phases even with no changes. Like Brown couldn’t tip off what could change, the plan is always to study what his teams did a year ago and do things that the coaches philosophically believe in but present it in different ways to opponents.
Other teams have good coaches as well so you have to change up what you’re doing and the bottom line is that each team is going to have to guess and adjust and the team that does it most efficiently and early will be able to have an advantage over the other.
4—Last meeting in Morgantown for a while. West Virginia and Penn State haven’t played in Morgantown since 1992 and will do so Saturday for the only scheduled game in the foreseeable future. Once a staple of the schedule, the two old rivals have only played one time since that last meeting and that was last season’s season opener. This is the last of the home-and-home between the two teams and could be the only meeting that the two will square off outside a possible matchup in a bowl game for a while.
College football realignment has made these types of one-time regional staple games even more difficult to schedule and it’s hard to truly know when the next will come up on the schedule.
As part of that, Brown is excited for the environment inside Milan Puskar Stadium and urges the fan base to be as loud as possible when Penn State has the ball and a little quieter when the Mountaineers do.
5—Brown gets it. It might have taken some time but there is no question that Brown, now in his sixth season atop the program, understands what the Mountaineers mean to the state and its people. He took time to reflect on the fact that he gets to coach at a place where football really matters, and Morgantown certainly has that on its side.
It’s something he thought about last week with some of the people with West Virginia ties back in town such as Joe Manchin, Joe Mazzulla and John Chambers. Brown believes that he is fortunate to be in that position and is excited to make the most of this upcoming campaign. While he completely recognized that this game won’t make or break the season for the Mountaineers, he does understand the significance and the way that the eyes of college football will be on Morgantown.
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