MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia head coach Neal Brown spoke during the Big 12 coaches teleconference Monday morning, heading into WVU’s (3-2, 2-2 Big 12) Halloween showdown Saturday against No. 16 Kansas State (4-1, 4-0) at Milan Puskar Stadium:
- On if there is a certain time of year when personnel or plays offensively get replaced or tossed aside if it hasn’t worked: “You basically start with a big glossary of plays, you install those, usually in spring practice and fall camp. Obviously, it was a unique situation this year. You pick and choose what plays you execute the best and line up best with what you’ll see defensively. That really doesn’t change. Then you have to window dress each and every week. Base run schemes, base pass concepts and base protections, from the NFL to high school, usually stay the same.
“If your quarterback doesn’t like the pass play for your o-line is not good at a run play, you get away from it. You don’t ask them to execute stuff they don’t do. I think that’s part of coaching. As far as players, a lot of it depends on what’s behind them. You try to get the most of your best players and when a player is struggling, you try to motivate him and try different techniques.
“If you have people that are equal, then you play them. If you don’t, then you have to ride through some downs, especially with a young player. I think a lot of people give up on young players too soon and you have to be really careful on that.”
- On what worked well in last year’s 24-20 road win over K-State: “I think that game was a lot like a lot of games in our league. It came down to the fourth quarter and we’ve played, since that game, pretty consistent on defense. They had some big plays on us, so it wasn’t a complete shut down by any means, so they still had success.”
- On Kansas State true freshman starting quarterback Will Howard and if WVU recruited him: “We knew about him, but obviously, your quarterback spots is filled for a couple years. The quarterback we took in that class was Garrett Greene, and we recruited him for a long time and built a relationship. Both Garrett and Will were recruited pretty heavily (by their respective schools) pretty early in the process.
“He’s a very physical runner and he hangs in there and does a really nice job. If you watched the game and didn’t know what age he was, you’d have no idea he was a true freshman.”
Texas kickoff time given six-day window
The Big 12 announced ESPN and FOX will utilize a six-day window to announce the broadcast network and time slot for WVU’s Nov. 7 game against Texas at Darrell K Royal — Texas Memorial Stadium. The game time and television network will be announced after the games this weekend.
It was also announced Sunday this week’s Kansas State game at noon Saturday will be aired on ESPN2. Tickets are available for the K-State, TCU (Nov. 14) and Oklahoma (Nov. 28) home games online at wvugame.com or by calling 1-800-WVU GAME.
With the 25% capacity limit at Milan Puskar Stadium, seats available in the socially distanced, reduced capacity manifest are displayed on the ‘Pick Your Own Seat’ map on wvugame.com in seat blocks ranging from one to six seats.
Tickets are priced by seat locations in each zone (Blue/Red Zone, Orange/Gold Zone, or Green Zone) and will be reflected on the seat map.
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