Brown’s focus for his team this week is to take ownership and look at being better individually

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For West Virginia football, the past two weeks have fallen well short of their expectations.

“Losing stinks,” West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said Tuesday. “I don’t think there’s anything earth shattering about that. When you invest time and energy into something and it doesn’t go the way you want it to go, it’s hard. I’m frustrated. I’m disappointed.”

Playing a gauntlet of a schedule which includes 11 games against Power Five opponents, Brown’s Mountaineers are 0-2. This week, West Virginia is set to face the only non-Power Five opponent they will play this year in Towson. Brown realizes the pressure is on to get a win, and says the focus for his team should be to look inward.

“The focus is on us this week,” Brown said. “It’s about us getting better and us improving and finding a way to get a win.”

Brown added his message to his team to do what they have to do to get better, saying it is no one else’s problem but the people in that locker room.

“It’s about confronting. To me, you don’t sugar coat these things. The brutal reality is where we’re at is where we’re at. We’re 0-2,” Brown said. “The bottom line is it’s not okay. We’re sitting here 0-2, we haven’t done the things we need to do to win football games. What you got to do on an individual level, you have to take ownership.”

Brown said he is challenging his leaders to be better and to set the standard moving forward.

“The people that have to take the most ownership are the leaders — and that’s the staff and that’s myself, and that’s the leaders within your team. And you have to look inward. Have you done everything that you need to do. Are you helping create the standard that everybody below you needs to uphold. And that’s the message for them,” Brown said. “If you didn’t, be a man, own it, let’s get it fixed.”

Brown hopes this adversity brings his team together, rather than divide them with still 10 games to go in the regular season.

“When you have adversity two things happen. You either come together and you really learn from it and grow from it and you look back and say that’s really where we got the thing turned or it splinters,” Brown said. “It’s up to us to really draw near and get better.”

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