Neal Brown stood behind his quarterback Austin Kendall following his four interception performance against Texas and he doubled down after watching the tape.

“I’m not disappointed in how he played. We’ve got to clean up some things but I think he gave us a chance in a lot of ways Saturday,” he said.

The redshirt junior completed 31-47 passes for 367 yards with 3 touchdowns through the air as well as a rushing score to go along with those mistakes. That was on top of missing a practice Sunday due to an infection on his finger that was injured against Missouri.

“He was a victim of some bad luck on at least two of those, maybe a third. I didn’t give him a very good play call on a third down that resulted in a pick so that one’s on me but I thought at times he played as well as he’s played all year,” Brown said.

Now, that doesn’t excuse those mistakes and Brown said that Kendall has been in a good mindset since the game and is expected to be fine moving forward when it comes to practicing.

“His mindset will be really good when we get back to practice today,” he said.

The Mountaineers will face another tough challenge at the quarterback spot when Brock Purdy and the Iowa State offense comes to town this weekend for a 4 p.m. kickoff. Purdy has thrown for 1,578 yards and 10 touchdowns with 2 interceptions while completing over 70-percent of his passes. He also has rushed for 203 yards and 5 more scores on the ground.

“Purdy is playing really good. I’m super impressed. You talk about a kid, he’s in the conversation to be the best quarterback we’ve played,” he said. “And we played against two really good ones already.”

Purdy has taken shots this season completing 77-90 passes (85-percent) for 626 yards and a pair of scores between 10-20 yards and connecting on 8-22 passes over 20 yards. He also has been a threat to make plays in the run game with the bulk of his yardage coming on designed runs.

The problems Purdy presents in the run game could be one of the bigger challenges as the Cyclones have a penchant for getting defenders in one on one situations on those plays.

“He’s got a really strong lower body and he’s fast. He’s broken a lot of tackles this year so that’s credit to him and something our guys have to be aware of,” he said.

Both teams enter the game at 3-2 and 1-1 in the Big 12 Conference.

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