Internal Improvements the Main Focus for Neal Brown the Rest of the Season

Despite a wild week in the Big 12 in which Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa State all lost and a big match-up with the undefeated Baylor Bears this week, WVU head coach Neal Brown is solely focused on the Mountaineers right now.

“I just want to get better, period,” Brown said on Monday. “I’m not spending a large amount of time on what Baylor’s doing, not because I don’t respect them, I do. I’m not spending any time whatsoever looking at other teams in the league because, for our football team, we’ve just got to get better.”

Even during a three-game losing streak that has left the team at 3-4, Brown thinks the team has been showing continued improvement this season.

“I really felt like we were making strides up through the first half of the OU game where we were getting better,” Brown said. “Some of it was hidden because Austin didn’t play against Iowa State, but we really made some strides in that game you couldn’t necessarily show in the production. I thought as a football team really since we left halftime at Missouri all the way to halftime at OU we were making positive strides. The second half was bad football. Really all we’ve concentrated on since we went back to work last week is, let’s get better.”

From the second half against Missouri through the first half of Oklahoma opponents outscored WVU 166-139 and outgained the Mountaineers 1,999 yards to 1,735.

The Mountaineers’ pass defense has been the team’s best unit for much of the year. Even with Jovanni Stewart leaving the team, Keith Washington II missing time with an injury and Hakeem Bailey getting ejected, Jalen Hurts’ 363 yards performance was the only time this year WVU has allowed over 300 passing yards. Twice West Virginia has held opponents below 200 passing yards and five times below 250.

With so many young, inexperienced players seeing the field for WVU this season, progression and improvement may be a better indicator for this team’s success than wins and losses.