MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — It was late in the preparation process for West Virginia to find out it was going to face a different starting quarterback for Oklahoma State.
On Thursday, it was announced freshman Spencer Sanders was going to miss the remainder of the regular season following thumb surgery. Sanders was questionable all week with a hand injury he suffered Nov. 2 against TCU and reaggravated it last week against Kansas, but it didn’t seem severe enough to warrant surgery.
But with just two days before the Cowboys kick off at Milan Puskar Stadium, WVU coach Neal Brown has a new quarterback to deal with in Dru Brown, but Neal Brown doesn’t expect too much to change with OSU’s game plan.
“He’s a fifth-year senior,” Neal Brown said on a weekly radio show on Thursday night. “He’s experienced. He can run, just like the Sanders kid. I don’t think it changes anything.”
So before WVU fans get too excited that the Mountaineers will face a backup quarterback today, Dru Brown has plenty of starting experience at the Division I level, similar to current WVU signal-caller Jarret Doege.
Doege had over 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns while at Bowling Green in 2017 and 2018 before transferring to West Virginia, so college football isn’t new to him. Brown was a grad transfer to Oklahoma State from Hawaii, where he started 22 games in from 2016-17, completing 62 percent of his passes for 5,273 yards and 37 touchdowns with 15 interceptions.
Brown played against Kansas in relief of Sanders and threw a 43-yard touchdown pass to Dylan Stoner.
“We were pleased with Dru,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said. “He has been a great illustration of the culture at Oklahoma State. I mentioned it after the game, he was a captain in that game because of all of the hard work and effort he has put in, and the commitment he has had to our program. We enjoy seeing him have success, and he came out and played well.”
The Cowboys are already without star receiver Tylan Wallace, who had 53 catches for 903 yards and eight touchdowns in just eight games before tearing his ACL. While their passing game is banged up, their running game certainly isn’t.
Running back Chuba Hubbard is leading the nation in rushing by nearly 300 yards (1,726), and he’s also found the end zone 20 times, which is second-best nationally. Hubbard can take a lot of the load off the Brown, and even if Sanders was healthy, West Virginia was likely to get a major dose of Hubbard anyway. He brings a balanced attack with his style of running that not many others have.
“Strength, speed, balance, got a really good burst, he finds the hole and he’s really got good vision,” WVU defensive coordinator Vic Koenning said. “Once he breaks into the secondary, I don’t know if we’ve got anybody that’s going to run faster than him. We’ve got to use great angle and we’ve got to be flawless in out support angles.”
