November is here and West Virginia has four games to define their season.
The Mountaineers are sitting at 4-4 overall and 3-2 in the league and with games left on the schedule starting with a trip to Cincinnati and then home games against Baylor and UCF before closing the year on the road at Texas Tech.
“The fate of our season will be determined over the next four weeks,” head coach Neal Brown said. “Our guys are fired up, determined to finish strong, so looking forward to it.”
West Virginia is breaking the season down into thirds with the two bye weeks with this last block of games an opportunity for them to close the season on a high note. It seems almost inconceivable but even sitting at .500 on the season the Mountaineers are still very much alive in the conference race.
“Traditionally we’ve played our best football in the month of November and we need to live up to that bill this year, too,” he said.
Brown has told his team that they remain in the race as well and he has been consistent that he believes a two-loss team could find their way in the league title game. And that has been the message to the team as well as the Mountaineers are coming off a much-needed bye week.
West Virginia is hoping to close the season similar to how they did a season ago when the team won three of their final four regular season games and then won the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
“It’s just like thinking like day-to-day. You don’t want to think like weeks ahead or after the season what’s going to happen,” offensive lineman Tomas Rimac said. “...So we’re putting our heads down and working. We’re not looking to the future.”
The Mountaineers entered this season with some high expectations and while they’ve failed to meet those at this stage of things, there is still an opportunity to course correct. And the focus is on one game at a time starting with this road trip to Cincinnati.
“We have four games and we can win these four games and finish 8-4 and go on to a bowl game and win that bowl game,” Rimac said. “It would be a pretty good season so we’re not down on ourselves or anything, we're just continuing to work and it starts with Cincinnati this week.”
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