Neal Brown Quick Hits: Turnovers, Penalties, Officiating

West Virginia fell flat toward the latter half of the game against No. 11 Iowa State 28-16.

WVU head coach Neal Brown spoke about what stood out in the loss.

“Two things that stick out is we had two turnovers, they had zero, and they resulted in 14 points, and we had [six] penalties, and they had one,” Brown said.

The Mountaineers’ two turnovers were two interceptions thrown by Garrett Greene. As Brown noted, Iowa State capitalized on the turnovers and scored 14 points.

“The two turnovers hurt us. I thought one of them was 100% pass interference, 100%, and the second one was just a bad decision,” Brown said.

Greene now has six interceptions on the season, which is two more than he had all of last season.

In terms of penalties, West Virginia had six penalties for a total of 42 yards, some in costly situations. Coming into the game, the Mountaineers have kept it fairly clean penalties-wise for the most part.

“We were the least penalized team coming in the country yards per game, I believe Tony; I think Caridi told me that the other day,” Brown said.

Something complementary to that is officiating, which Brown spoke a great deal of.

“I’m so confused about what defensive pass interference, what defensive holding because I would encourage you to go watch the game and watch how [Kole Taylor] was played. He’s 6’7″, he’s not hard to find, and we worked the middle of the field, and no defensive holding, no PI (Pass Interference) (called) is beyond me. I don’t understand it,” Brown said. “I’m going be careful what I say because we lost the game. The officials didn’t lose the game by any means; we lost the game. We had opportunities to 3win, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t very good.”

Now .500 on the season, and 2-1 in conference play, West Virginia will look to bounce in a major way when they host Kansas State next week.