West Virginia head coach Neal Brown felt that his team was close in the 28-16 loss to Iowa State, but close isn’t enough to get it done.
The Mountaineers had multiple opportunities with the game within reach but weren’t able to overcome mistakes and miscues at various different stages throughout the contest. That was magnified even further with critical penalties that extended a scoring drive for Iowa State and one flag that wasn’t thrown when Koke Taylor was contacted with on an interception.
“So those are things that, you know, fate, luck, whatever you want to say, like, they worked against us,” Brown said. “Now with that being said, we had some opportunities.”
While West Virginia can’t control some things that occurred, the Mountaineers could have done a number of things differently such as catching the football in a third down situation or getting off the field on a pair of third and long situations.
The Mountaineers have to find a way to not beat themselves, especially against ranked opponents and West Virginia will have another chance to take on another this coming weekend in No. 17 Kansas State. Those mistakes are ones that can’t occur if this team wants to have success.
“For us to get to the level where we can win those games, where we can beat an Iowa State, where we can beat a Kansas State that we play this week, we cannot have those mistakes,” he said.
It hasn’t occurred in every instance but it has been a problem against the higher quality teams on the slate and Brown understands that it has to be a focus moving forward.
“And so, we're better, but to knock out a top-10 team, like, you can't do some of the things,” he said.
West Virginia is now 3-16 against ranked teams under Brown and while not all of them have been the same story, the Mountaineers have certainly let opportunities slip through their fingers during that span.
“There’s been some instances where people are just better. You know, like we’ve played some games here where people are better and I think that’s fair. I just usually kind of call a spade a spade and they’re just better than us,” he said. “That’s not necessarily the case here. That wasn’t the case at Pitt.”
West Virginia is going to have to find a way to make both the correct calls and plays at key moments and the program is going to have another opportunity to prove that growth Saturday.
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