Neal Brown had a feeling during the spring that his roster was going to change heading into the fall.
He wasn’t wrong.
Out of the prospects that signed with West Virginia one of the three remaining options in Brandon Yates has indeed reported to camp while safeties Osita Smith and Rashean Lynn will be heading the junior college route.
Previously, wide receiver Terence Doston had decided to pursue a professional baseball career as an outfield with the Milwaukee Brewers organization.
Yates provides the Mountaineers with another talented option on the offensive line and one that could develop into a tackle or a guard moving forward.
“He practiced today. He’s talented and he worked really hard over the summer to get here,” Brown said.
Outside of the players that signed with West Virginia in the 2019 class, the Mountaineers added a total of eight scholarship players to the roster.
Those are graduate transfers wide receiver George Campbell and defensive lineman Reuben Jones, traditional transfers quarterback Jarrett Doege, wide receiver Sean Ryan and cornerback Alonzo Addae, junior college additions in offensive lineman John Hughes and Noah Guzman and high school cornerback Tacorey Turner. Each of those will be eligible this season outside of Alonzo while the status of Doege and Ryan remain up in the air after requesting waivers for immediate eligibility.
A reoccurring theme with the additions is that each of them outside of the graduate transfers and Alonzo will have multiple years of eligibility remaining in their careers as Brown and the coaching staff looks to rebuild the scholarship numbers in the program and balance the classes.
“When you’re trying to build a roster there is so much that goes into it,” he said.
When it comes to the graduate transfers, Brown saw players that had potential and were boosts to their respective position groups by bringing length at wide receiver with Campbell and energy as well as a desire to play hard in the case of Jones on the defensive line.
The Mountaineers also were hit with some attrition during the spring with the departures of several players such as Kenny Robinson, Marcus Simms and Derrek Pitts forcing the coaches to look at ways to be creative to continue to address areas of need. That also involved creating more competition at other positions and bringing in players that could positively impact as well.
“We weren’t as good as we needed to be in the spring but not only that we didn’t have the level of energy that I wanted to have in our football team,” he said. “Our leadership wasn’t as good as it needed to be and we didn’t have depth. We had dangerous depth at some positions. We were really active and we look like a different football team than we did in the spring.”
One of those areas that was greatly improved from the spring is at wide receiver where the additions of Campbell and Ryan, as well as the two freshmen Ali Jennings and Winston Wright, to go with the returning nucleus adds more options. Brown liked that there was more length on the outside when it comes to the team and that is necessary to make plays down the field.
Offensive lineman Jacob Buccigrossi also won’t be returning to the program after medically retiring after a series of injuries to his shoulder as well as his knee.
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