Anyone walking into the West Virginia University football team’s main meeting room wanting to see what the rest of the 2024 season looks like is now out of luck.
That schedule is now papered over with a giant “1-0.” The message from head coach Neal Brown is simple: There’s no reason to worry about two and three games down the line. There’s no reason to even think about them. The only goal is to win the next one.
“We were getting a lot of questions about how many ranked teams we play, what the rest of the schedule looks like,” Brown said. “And I’m like, why even show it to them?”
It’s the right mindset to have in the Big 12, Brown said, because there’s both a beauty and a curse to what seems to be a very even talent distribution in the conference.
“The good thing about this league, you’ve got a chance to win every week,” Brown said. “The bad thing about this league, you’ve got a chance to lose every week.”
Brown has to realize there’s both beauty and a curse to his own statement. If every game is winnable, then the Mountaineers, if they’re not winning, should be in every game on the Big 12 schedule to the final seconds.
There’s evidence to the claim that this year’s Big 12 lineup is as even as it has been in a while. Of the conference’s 16 teams, only five own a .500 or worse overall record through last Saturday’s games and only three Big 12 teams are winless in conference play.
So what does that mean for WVU? Let’s break away a little from Brown’s edict to the team and look two games ahead (too much goes on in this topsy-turvy world of college football to go any further than that).
Saturday’s opponent, Iowa State, is the conference’s top ranked team at No. 11 in the Associated Press Top 25. It has the sixth-best defense in the Football Bowl Subdivision in points allowed (10.0 per game) and 13th best in yards allowed (271.6 yards per game). Penn State has put up similar defensive stats this year – 11.4 points and 233.2 yards allowed per game – and WVU’s offensive performance against the Nittany Lions was one to forget.
Yet WVU is averaging nearly seven yards per play and more than 500 yards offensively in its last two games and racked up 389 rushing yards in a win over Oklahoma State. And while the Cyclones don’t make many mistakes on offense, their output isn’t earth-shattering and WVU is coming off its best defensive performance of the season, holding OSU to 227 total yards and holding last year’s Doak Walker Award winner Ollie Gordon II to just 50 rushing yards.
Throw in a juiced-up Mountaineer crowd for a nationally televised night game featuring new all-black “Coal Rush” uniforms and, while that may not be the guaranteed formula for victory, it should be enough for WVU to stay in the fight until the end.
After that is another nationally ranked foe, No. 18 Kansas State. The Wildcats are 4-1 overall, but 1-1 in conference with a loss to BYU. Right away, that shows that KSU isn’t infallible. The Wildcats also have a tough game against Colorado this weekend, so there’s no telling what shape the team will be in next week.
Kansas State is great running the ball (seventh nationally at 252.2 yards per game) and against the run (16th nationally at 91.8 yards allowed per game). That’s not optimal for a WVU team with a growing reputation as a running team. Yet the Wildcats are rancid at both throwing the ball (108th at 180.2 yards per game) and giving up passing yards (100th nationally at 244.2 yards per game). That’s welcome news for quarterback Garrett Greene who, while not a terribly accurate passer at 57.1%, he has big-play capabilities with both his arm and his legs.
Again, that might not be enough to write a “W” next to the KSU game in ink, but it should be enough to give WVU a good chance to win.
After last year’s 9-4, Duke’s Mayo Bowl-winning finish, the expectations around the Mountaineers should be to at least maintain their spot in the Big 12 in 2024. Offensively, WVU returned plenty of talent – a seasoned quarterback, skilled running backs and tons of experience on the offensive line. It also lost six defensive starters from last year, including two of its top three tacklers. One of those was second-team All-American Beanie Bishop. The bottom line is that, while there are plenty of components for success for WVU this year, this isn’t a team capable of overlooking anyone on the slate.
So Brown was smart to hang that “1-0” over the 2024 schedule outside the team meeting room. If the Mountaineers have any designs on building upon a 2-0 Big 12 start, that’s as far ahead as they can afford to look.
— Story by Derek Redd
