Neal Brown Details Disastrous Day in Lubbock: ‘Wasn’t Good Enough, We’re Not Hiding From That’

Even though most WVU fans may not want to hear from Neal Brown anymore, he did speak following West Virginia’s embarrassing 52-15 loss in Lubbock on Saturday.

Brown opened up his postgame press conference by detailing what went wrong for the Mountaineers and trying to explain why his team was never even able to be competitive.

“Today was just not good enough in the first half. I thought our guys competed in the second half, but in all three phases in the first half, we were very poor. We handled the travel fine, we’ve played well on the road this year and we practiced pretty well this week. We just did not win a time in the first half and did not compete. I think offensively, we had a slow start. We had missed an opportunity on fourth down,” said Brown.

He then brought up a critical early failure on a fourth down play that halted a WVU drive when the game was still close as a turning point.

“We had Huddy (Hudson Clement) open, and we didn’t connect on that. That would have been a big play. I don’t know if we win, but it definitely would not have been the ass-whooping it ended up being.”

But even if that play went the Mountaineers way, it wouldn’t have mattered based on the rest of the game unfolded.

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“Overall, we just had too many negative plays offensively. If you look at the final stats, you’re like, ‘wow, they’re not that bad,’ but we just played so poorly in the first half. And it was too hard to overcome. But if you look at sacks, it wasn’t just one person. I think the running backs gave up two sacks, we had a tight end give up a pressure, we had an o-line man miss a block, and then some TFLs. They were moving the front, which we anticipated. They probably moved it a little bit more than they have. We didn’t handle some of those run-throughs very well. And then defensively, this is just a bad matchup. I can get up here and talk about it for a while, but they got us in space. We had several injuries in the game too. And that’s not an excuse, that’s just the truth. We had several injuries, kind of early in the second half or even early in the second quarter, and they were just better than us in space. And we missed a lot of tackles. They got the ball out of their hands quick, and we didn’t play as well up front as we have this year. On special teams, the kickoff return issues we shouldn’t have those. Like that ball should have been fair caught, and we should have moved on, but it wasn’t. And so, it wasn’t’ good enough and we’re not hiding from that. I don’t think that the first half of football necessarily defines who our players are, who we are as individuals, or who we are as a team. But we’re not pleased with that,” added Brown to further explain the disastrous day.

And while many are speculating if Brown will even still be around to coach West Virginia in the bowl game, he did lay out a plan when asked about preparing for the postseason.

Here’s what WVU HC Neal Brown said when asked about his plan for bowl game prep:

“They need some rest. It's been a long year, and those guys have to listen to all the negativities. It's been a hard year for them. They need a little bit of a break. They need to be able to catch…

— Mike J. Asti (@MikeAsti11) December 1, 2024

“They need some rest. It’s been a long year, and those guys have to listen to all the negativities. It’s been a hard year for them. They need a little bit of a break. They need to be able to catch their breath. The positive is today’s not going to be the end. We have another game. We can always finish well in a bowl game. Our guys will bounce back, and they bounced back in the second half. It wasn’t clean football, but it was a heck of a lot better than what we did in the first half. And these guys, anytime they’ve had their backs against the wall, they’ve always come out and responded, and they’ll do that in the bowl game. I hurt for them, because the first half, did not indicate who we are.”

With the loss, West Virginia finishes the 2024 regular season at 6-6. Neal Brown now needs a bowl win to avoid his fourth losing season overall at WVU.

For a related story, WVU fans expressed disdain for Neal Brown after the game.