WVSports.com looks at the Kansas postgame press conference from West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Neal Brown and determines the three 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 forward.
1. Offense grinds it out - It may not have been the prettiest win for West Virginia, but the Mountaineers found a way and got the job done.
Offensively, the Mountaineers didn’t have any big plays (longest pass was 18 yards and longest rush was 30 yards) on the field but dominated time of possession with a 37:41-22:19 advantage over Kansas. The offense also ran 85 total plays to Kansas’ 56 and the dominance in time of possession helped keep Kansas’ offense off the field.
For the second straight game, West Virginia’s managed to have success on the ground and played a big factor in the win. The team gained a season-high 192 rushing yards to go along with three touchdowns.
Out of those 192 yards three touchdowns, senior running back Martell Pettaway gained 40 of those yards and scored two of those touchdowns. Brown was proud of the three running backs’ (Pettaway, Kennedy McKoy and Leddie Brown) efforts as well as how Pettaway bounced back.
The Detroit native had just 14 rushing yards on 15 carries entering Saturday and didn’t see the field during last week’s win over NC State.
Brown also praised quarterback Austin Kendall’s efficiency (he finished 25-of-37 for 202 yards) and the fact that the team went 9-for-18 on third downs.
West Virginia’s offense scored on five of its six final drives of the game, but scored a touchdown on just two of those five drives. The Mountaineers also answered a Kansas score with a score of their own on the ensuing drive twice in the second half.
“Today we just kind of grinded it out,” Brown said. “Every time they scored, we answered and I thought that was huge in the game.”
2. Brown praises Stanley - For the second straight week, Kansas quarterback Carter Stanley put together a solid performance for the Jayhawks.
After throwing just seven incomplete passes in a win against Boston College last week, the senior threw just six incomplete passes against the Mountaineers and racked up a season-high 275 passing yards and three touchdowns with an interception.
Brown was impressed with Stanley’s performance and has known him for awhile since he played for a friend of Brown’s at Vero Beach High School in Florida.
“I’ve been watching him since he was at Vero Beach High School and he played in a similar system there that we run and he has gotten incrementally better each and every year and he’s playing football right now at a high level,” Brown said.
3. Decision to punt on fourth down late in the game - Instead of going for it on 4th-and-7 from the Kansas 34 with 38 seconds left in the game, Brown decided to punt the ball which resulted in a touchback.
The Jayhawks’ would ultimately fall short of a miracle finish during their final offensive drive, but Brown did discuss his thinking process leading up to the decision to punt it away.
“I was going to go for it if we got under three yards,” Brown said. “I didn’t feel good about it and then the other thing too the ball was going to be at the 35… something like that and Josh, that’s his specialty--the pooch punts. We didn’t do a very good job covering that punt so I was thinking Josh could get us inside the 10 and now they gotta go 90-plus yards for a touchdown because the game was at five (points).”
“So if it was under three, we were going to run it and we felt good about getting it because we were running the ball effectively but when it was that deep, I was gonna let Josh do his speciality,” Brown added.
West Virginia did burn its final timeout prior to punting the ball and when asked if he thought about taking a delay of game rather than the timeout, Brown said he left it up to the team’s punter in Josh Growden.
“I asked Josh what he wanted to do and he said ‘No, I’m fine.’ So that’s kind of how it went down,” Brown said.
WATCH: West Virginia Mountaineers head football coach Neal Brown - Kansas Postgame
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