West Virginia head coach Neal brown held his weekly press conference on Monday following a last-second loss to Houston and ahead of WVU’s game against Oklahoma State.
Moving on From Houston
“Never experienced a loss like that,” Brown said. “I said this after the game, the game should’ve never came down to a Hail Mary. I felt strongly about that right after the contest and even more so after watching it four or five times.”
Brown added that he had the defensive personnel he wanted in the game at that time on the field and if he had to do it over again he would have Brough more pressure.
“We have a last play grouping, we didn’t put it in. We didn’t practice it last week mostly because we had some injuries in it. We quit using offensive guys really several years ago when the Patriots had Gronkowski out there and I think the Dolphins beat them… our best defensive guys are our best vertical guys right now anyways.”
“If I had to do anything over again we would’ve pressured,” Brown added.
Houston’s Performance (Besides the Last Play)
Brown said Houston deserved to win the game. He referenced the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball as an area where the Cougars consistently beat the Mountaineers. He said his best players on defense didn’t play well enough and that on offense they left plays out on the field.
“The reasons why we were successful during that four game winning streak is because we played really disciplined football, we didn’t beat ourselves, we didn’t have a whole lot of penalties, we didn’t turn it over and we were tough on both sides of the line of scrimmage. And those were a lot of the same reasons why we didn’t win this game.”
Special Teams: “Special teams, our core guys, we got a bunch of core guys that are starters on two or more teams, they didn’t play very well. That’s their role, they didn’t play very well. Not good enough overall… We had some poor kick locations, the ball wasn’t in the air long enough and we weren’t on our landmarks. Punt, Oli really struggled. Probably his worst game in two years”
Offense: “Offensively it’s the best game. It’s really what I thought we could be when we got all our pieces together. I thought Garrett was special. We can and he will build off that… Disappointed in how we played up front. We didn’t have two starters but we don’t deal with excuses around here. We were pretty good in pass protection but not good enough in the run game”
Defense: “Defensively, our best players didn’t play very well. Anytime, regardless of the score, when your best players play really well, you’re going to struggle… We need to dominate with the front six and we didn’t. Our pass coverage wasn’t good enough. Our zone drops were off. We gave up way too many easy completions and a lot of that has to do with underneath defenders. We just didn’t get to our spots and so that was poor. Then they scored touchdowns on five of their last seven drives and the longest one was six plays maybe.”
Injuries
West Virginia was without three starters this past week, but they hope to get two of them back. Starting left tackle Wyatt Milum should be back according to Brown, while safety Aubrey Burks practiced today (Monday) and they hope he can progress throughout the week and be ready to go on Saturday.
For left guard Tomas Rimac, the Mountaineers expect to be without him for the second consecutive game this week.
“I feel confident Wyatt will be back. He just needs to get through another day or so and I feel confident with that. Burks practiced today in a limited basis and hopefully he’ll progress and be available. I think Tomas is probably more likely versus UCF. I think that will be the earliest.”
Oklahoma State
No matter the outcome against Houston, the show rolls on for Brown and company. The Mountaineers welcome Oklahoma State who are on a two-game winning streak with home wins against ranked Kansas State and Kansas. The Cowboys have had a turnaround after a rough start to the season which saw them drop to 2-2 with losses to South Alabama and Iowa State.
“I think Oklahoma State is one of the hottest teams in the country. I really credit Coach Grundy and his staff. They had a low point. They get beat at home by South Alabama, but they’ve rebounded well. They went up to Ames, lost a close game, took a bye week and off that bye week they’ve won two games against ranked opponents. You can tell during that bye week and really simplified what they’re doing on offense and defense.”
“We’ve got our hands full. I’m looking forward to kind of getting back to work. Our guys will respond. They understand what we put on tape wasn’t good enough and looking forward to Saturday.”
