West Virginia head coach Neal Brown was both physically and emotionally drained following his team’s 24-21 road win over TCU for obvious reasons.

The Mountaineers had two starters leave on a cart in safety Aubrey Burks and linebacker Tray Lathan, while a number of others left the game with injuries. It was a physical game and satisfying to come out with the win but as the head coach Brown was hurt for those that had to leave.

West Virginia has gotten positive reports on Burks who left with a neck injury, but Lathan needs to have surgery on a lower leg injury as both remained in Fort Worth overnight.

“For as excited as I am I feel for those guys and I think our team feels the same way,” he said.

The Mountaineers overcame adversity yet again to win their fourth consecutive football game, this time over a TCU team that had won nine of their last ten games at home.

“Probably as proud of a football team as I’ve ever been. What a huge win. TCU is a really good football team. A team that won a lot of these games last year on the way to the national championship,” he said.

Brown preached his team’s toughness all off-season and how physical the practices were in both the spring and fall camp. It’s a team that is built for fights and this certainly was one of those. The Mountaineers are now 4-1 on the season and 2-0 in the Big 12 after being picked dead last in the pre-season and have used that as a rallying cry of sorts internally.

“We have a really tough team that’s really close. It’s a group that’s grown together. Our backs have been against the wall, and I don’t want to hear anybody social media saying, ‘I saw them being 4-1’,” Brown said. “The only people that really believed was us.”

It was a familiar formula for West Virginia as the Mountaineers played physical yet disciplined football. The visitors didn’t turn the ball over and were only penalized twice for ten yards. This team isn’t beating themselves and plays hard but against TCU they displayed their mental toughness.

It’s hard to overcome watching teammates go down with injuries, especially those that involve them leaving the stadium to seek further medical treatment. West Virginia used their run game on offense to the tune of 201 yards and just enough plays in the passing game to give them the edge on the scoreboard. Then the Mountaineers relied on their defense to put up a second half shutout.

After allowing 21 points and 312 yards in the first half, the Mountaineers held the Horned Frogs to just one total yards in the third quarter and just 121 total to go along with keeping them off the scoreboard. West Virginia recorded a total of five sacks in the game and nine tackles for loss while consistently getting pressure on Horned Frogs quarterback Chandler Morris.

“Defensively I can’t say enough. Second half wise, they’ve got really good skill guys and we bent a little bit, but we never broke,” Brown said.

The Mountaineers had never won three consecutive games under Brown prior to this season and have now won four in a row and started 2-0 in the league for the first time in his tenure.

West Virginia keeps finding a way with this one ending with the Mountaineers blocking two field goals on the final Horned Frogs possessions to preserve the win.

Now, the Mountaineers will head into a bye week with Houston on deck for another road game Oct. 12 which will give the program some time to heal up and get ready for another critical stretch.

It was a hard-fought physical first five games of the season, but the Mountaineers are certainly looking a lot better than the 14th place team in the Big 12 Conference.

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