Neal Brown talked to the media after a 41-28 victory over UCF, the most points the Mountaineers have put up against a FBS opponent this season.
“I thought really what it came down to is like our brand of football. When we’re playing well, is we’re disciplined and you can see that we got four penalties in the game and two of them right at the end,” Brown, said.
West Virginia’s offense had a total of 450 yards in the win, 286 on the ground alone. The defense also did their part in creating four turnovers, three of which turned into touchdowns.
“We worked a lot of it in the spring into fall camp and today, that was the reason we won the game” Brown, said of creating and capitalizing on takeaways.
Beanie Bishop alone created takeaways with two interceptions.
“That was huge, especially the first one we got because they were driving and then we immediately turned that into a touchdown,” Brown, said of Bishop’s play.
In terms of preparing for the game, Brown knew he wanted to be aggressive, “We were going to be in attack mode and I think as a coach, you can’t just talk that. You got to show it.”
Brown showed it multiple times, including going for a 4th & 1 on the first drive of the game that led to a touchdown.
“Made the decision on Friday, hey we’re going to be really aggressive. We probably would have gone for it fourth one back to maybe the minus (our own) 30,” Brown, continued.
Brown also had to gameplan around injuries.”We had some guys get hurt and we played two backup linemen for majority of the game. We had a couple of receivers went down. We played a bunch of different receivers in the game, linebackers, we rotated some guys that hadn’t played,” he, said.
The Mountaineers, as they have been doing, utilized a three-headed snake at running back today including Justin Johnson, CJ Donaldson and true freshman Jaheim White. The trio rushed for 221 yards on 33 attempts.
CJ Donaldson had 121 yards and a touchdown himself after being RB2 on the depth chart prior to the game. “I thought this was CJ’s best game since Pitt. When he runs like that, man, he’s a load and the thing that(about) today was he was so good after contact,” Brown, said.
Garret Greene also had himself a day. He completed 14 passes on 23 attempts for 156 yards but made his money on the ground with 55 yards and 3 touchdowns. “We’ve got a shot every week because of him,” Brown, said about his quarterback.
Lastly, Brown noted that Doug Nester is dealing with a lower leg injury that will be evaluated back in Morgantown.
The Mountaineers will look to build off this momentum next week against BYU at home.
