MORGANTOWN — The head coach is as excited as he’s ever been and players are in the best shape of their lives, which could only mean one thing — fall camp began for the West Virginia Mountaineers Wednesday morning.
“I’m fired up about this group,” sixth-year head coach Neal Brown said after practice on Wednesday. “This is year 22 for me as a coach and year 10 as a head coach and I’m probably as excited as I’ve been.”
Every team feels good before the season and Brown hit on all the usual feel-good coaching platitudes on Wednesday, but he also offered explanations for why he’s feeling as good about the team as he is.
“I really like the leadership of our team,” he said. “If you look at the guys that have been here and grown through our culture, I’m really pleased with where that’s at.”
Brown also said that through a combination of WVU’s nutrition and strength and conditioning staffs, the players are, collectively, in as good of shape as ever.
“Our body fat percentages are the best they’ve ever been,” Brown said. “We look the part.”
After taking a big step and reaching nine wins last season, Brown and the Mountaineers have their sights on a Big 12 championship for 2024. Brown said “on paper” this could be the best roster he’s had while at WVU, but for as good as he felt on Wednesday, he’s not ready to declare anything definitively just yet.
“Talk to me after our second scrimmage and I’ll probably be able to give you a fair answer,” Brown said of how good the 2024 roster is. “Defensively we’ve got more depth than we’ve ever had and offensively we’ve got a good mix of playmakers, probably the best mix that we’ve had. And our quarterback (Garrett Greene), I think he’s got a chance to be elite.”
The Big 12 looks completely different from a couple of years ago with eight newcomers joining since then and the premiere programs Oklahoma and Texas departing. Brown is confident WVU will be successful in the new-look league.
“Regardless of the conference, West Virginia has always faired very well,” Brown said. “Probably less success in the Big 12, but it’s coming.”
The Mountaineers will practice 15 times before the start of classes on Aug. 21. The team will scrimmage twice during that span
“Everybody on the roster will get reps through that second scrimmage,” Brown said. “The purpose of that is everyone has an opportunity to get evaluated.”
In addition to the two scrimmages, there will be a couple of other “game-like” practices to try and accurate to two news rules for 2024, in-game coach-to-helmet communication and the use of Microsoft Surface tablets on the sidelines.
“With the new rules, the coach-to-player (communication) and the (tablets), we’re going to make it more game-like four or five times before we suit up against Penn State,” Brown said. “Until the 21st, we’re preparing for the season and that’s all 12 games. After the 21st we’ll get into Penn State prep.”
The Penn State game will kick off what is expected to be another tough schedule for the Mountaineers.
“The schedule (difficulty) is to be determined,” Brown said. “Everyone was whining about our schedule in hindsight last year but if you remember, we opened up against Penn State, a top-10 team, we played Pitt who was on a lot of people’s preseason top 25 and then Texas Tech came here and they were a preseason top 25.”
The Mountaineers’ first five conference games are all against teams that were picked to finish higher than them in the preseason Big 12 poll.
“On paper, it looks really hard,” Brown said. “Our league is extremely deep.”
The Mountaineers will practice every day this week, ending with Fan Day at Milan Puskar Stadium on Saturday.
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