Despite leading by 10 with under five minutes to go, West Virginia lost to Pitt 34-24 Saturday in a heart-breaker for Mountaineer fans.
WVU head coach Neal Brown spoke about what went wrong for his team late.
“You should never lose a game when you’re up 10 with under five to go,” Brown said. “Credit Pitt. They made plays at the end of the game and we did not.”
Heading into their final two drives, West Virginia only allowed four net yards to Pitt in the second half. On the Panthers’ final two scoring drives, they accumulated 152 yards in a combined 3:38, leading to two touchdowns.
“I mean let’s just say what it is. We did not cover the pass very [well],” Brown said. “The quarterback (Eli Holstein) ran around. We got pressure on him and he slipped out several times. Credit to him. But yeah, I mean, there’s nothing I can say up here, though. You know it is what it is. We didn’t cover and not fired up about it.”
Besides defensive miscues, the Mountaineers also failed offensively to fight back late. They failed to pick up a single first down and had no answer to the Panthers’ defense.
“This one’s probably bad or worse,” Brown said of this loss compared to 2022.”We didn’t execute it in the last five minutes.”
This is West Virginia’s second loss to Pitt since the Brawl returned in 2022 and its second loss of the season.
“We got nine conference games, and our league’s really good. And the truth of it is, they’re all going to be games like we played today. And we’ve got to figure out ways to win,” Brown said. “This isn’t over by any means; we’re going to fight our tails off. We got a team next week that’s in the same predicament as us and both teams are going to come in back against the wall and that’s it.”
West Virginia hosts Kansas in the first game of conference play next week. Kickoff is at noon EST and will be nationally televised on ESPN2.
