MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia coach Neal Brown said Tuesday he saw some improvement from his secondary during day two of his split-squad fall training camp.
The first group hit the field at 9:30 a.m., followed by the second group at 11:30 a.m. The second practice finished on schedule just after 1 p.m.
“I thought our secondary did a lot better job in what we were asking them to do in our match coverage,” Brown said in a news release. “Our communication in the back end with both groups was much improved, even more improved than it’s been in our OTAs and definitely [Monday].”
Brown thought the stamina from his defensive linemen was much better Tuesday than Monday, although it was much cooler with a steady breeze.
“We were able to play multiple plays in a row and some of that was because it was not as hot,” Brown said.
Offensively, Brown said the morning group did a much better job throwing and catching today and the afternoon group wasn’t quite as sharp, but did overcome some adversity toward the end of practice.
“We didn’t play very well but finished,” he said.
Brown specifically mentioned the work put in today by place kickers Casey Legg and Evan Staley. He thought they performed well during pressure situations.
“We got some really good fundamental work in on special teams, which is something that our kids are buying in to,” he said. “Early on in camp, we worked special teams in segments, really not a whole unit, and they are buying into that drill work because they are starting to see it show up in game situations like it did at the end of last year.”
Tuesday was Day 2 of installation with another day of installation scheduled for tomorrow. The process will repeat on Friday following Thursday’s recovery day.
“We kind of go day one, two, three and then we will be in a situation where we kind of throw it all at them at a real slow tempo,” Brown said. “We will walk through and kind of walk and talk and go through all of it to make sure we’ve got it all checked and then we just add to it.
“We will do an install one again but it will be a B and then we will go back and do an install two with a B version and as we get into camp we’ll do the C and D versions, as well.”
Work was done again in only helmets, and Brown still isn’t sure when he will put them into shoulder pads.
“We are going to kind of evaluate it. I’ve got a couple of experiments I’m doing while we’ve been in shorts here, and I’m going to get all of the data from the GPS units and then from watching the video we will make a decision on that tomorrow,” he said.
The rest of this week’s schedule includes field work today, Friday and Saturday, with an off day on Sunday.
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