MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia head coach Neal Brown spoke during the Big 12 coaches teleconference Monday morning, leading into Saturday’s home game against Baylor (1-0) at Milan Puskar Stadium. Here is what he had to say:
- Opening statement on wrapping up the Oklahoma State loss and heading into the Baylor game: “We’re coming off a disappointing performance. We didn’t play very well at all. Credit Oklahoma State, they played much more sound football than we did. Therefore, they won the game. Looking forward to getting back home this week against Baylor.
“A lot of respect for that program — what coach (Matt) Rhule did turning around, and then what coach (Dave) Aranda continues to do. A team that jumps out to you on film because they play with a toughness, they play with an edge, play extremely hard. I thought they had a really good outing in their first game (47-14 win over Kansas).”
- On similarities to last year’s Oklahoma State game: “There were some similarities, score wise, but it was a different game. Last year, we limited their run game a lot. Chuba (Hubbard) had less than 100, but this year, they really ran the ball on us and did a nice job, rushing for over 200 yards.
“The same can be said for us, although the total rushing isn’t good because of a fallacy on how they keep stats (sacks count against rushing yards), but we had a lot of negative plays through sacks, but we ran the ball for 130-plus yards and that was a big-time improvement from what we did a year ago.
“The commonalities were we didn’t finish in the red zone. But another difference is, in this one, we hurt ourselves a bunch — penalties, missed assignments, missed fits in the run game … Oklahoma State won the game, not to take anything away from them, but we did not play very well at all.”
- On how strange it is to not play in front of fans at home: “It’s not ideal. We hope to soon have fans here. Hopefully, we’ll have an announcement shortly. But we won’t have them for the Baylor game. The way we approach it is, no one is here watching practice ever day, so we still have to compete at a high level with the way we treat the game, but it’s not ideal.”
- On the performance of the offensive line against OSU: “There were some highs and there were several lows. The highs were I thought Mike Brown and Chase Behrndt played really well. We weren’t good enough at tackle. We’ll look at some ways we can get better there. A lot of it was not ability, but footwork and not having their eyes where they were supposed to be. That was the first time they had been in a game with that type of quality people, too, so they’ll get better.
“We ran the ball much better. I thought Leddie (Brown) played better. We were able to get the ball to the line of scrimmage. All of those negative yards came on pass plays. We didn’t protect as well, but a lot of that is on Jarret (Doege), too. Jarret didn’t move the right direction some. We missed some throws, but Jarret Doege showed his toughness. That kid is tough. He stepped into a bunch of throws and missed some balls. We have to get better, and he will get better, but I think he showed his team that he’s playing tough. His preparation will always give him a chance, and I think he’ll be better this week.”
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