Seven games into the Neal Brown era at West Virginia and the bye week provides some natural time for reflection and assessing things from a number of different vantage points.

One of those is on the recruiting trail as the Mountaineers 2020 class had been stuck at 13 commitments for quite a while until the decommitment of S.L. McCall. But the coaches now have had over half a season worth of games to assess their needs.

It’s clear that this program needs an infusion of talent and experience in some spots given the youth the board and one of those has now been clearly defined.

“I think we’re going to add a couple more DBs to the class than we originally thought because of some attrition,” head coach Neal Brown said. “I think that’s the only thing from a positional standpoint. We need to add at least one older defensive back and maybe two even.”

That falls in line with actions on the recruiting trail of late as the Mountaineers have extended several scholarship offers to junior college defensive backs led by Hutchinson C.C. (Kan.) cornerback Ronald Williams and Gulf Coast C.C. (Miss.) cornerback Jackie Matthews.

Of the two, Matthews has already indicated that he plans to take an official visit to West Virginia in December and the pair could help address a situation where the Mountaineers will lose both of their starters there leaving behind not much on the depth chart outside of young players.

Still outside a few situations don’t expect Brown and his coaching staff to make any whole sale push into the junior college ranks to address some of the needs on the roster as a whole. There will be a mix of players from both those schools and potential graduate transfers but the foundation remains the same.

“We’re going to build this through high school development,” Brown said.

The Mountaineers already have a pair of junior college commitments in the fold and the key to each of those is that there was either an already-established bond or the coaches have been involved for a long time in their recruitment. That will be essentially a rule of thumb in most cases.

“We’ve got some really good relationships junior college wise and a lot of these kids we’re on junior college wise we’ve got relationships that go back to when those kids were in high school,” Brown said. “We have prior, previous relationships with them.”

So while you likely aren’t going to see upwards of 10-12 junior college players in a class as you did at times under the old regime, it is something that will be effectively utilized at times.

Brown and his coaches have a plan and like they’re preaching to the team now it’s about trusting the climb in order to get to that point.

WATCH: Musings from the Mountains | West Virginia Football | Episode 34

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