Neal Brown Wants WVU to Enjoy Win Before Turning Page to Iowa State

As expected, WVU head coach Neal Brown was in a good mood after West Virginia’s 38-14 win over Oklahoma State on Saturday. But while Brown is satisfied with the dominating win, he also knows it’s only one game and the Mountaineers have another difficult test coming up next week.

During his postgame press conference following the game, Brown touched on how what went well for his team lined up with what he knew they’d have to do in order to win.

“The keys were going to be who can run the football better, who can establish it, and then who can score points in the red zone, preferably touchdowns in the red zone. If you look at it, obviously we won the rushing game big, and then in the red zone, we didn’t score touchdowns every time, but we were 6-for-7. The one that we didn’t get was the kneel down there at the end of the game,” Brown said.

He also made sure to show his defense some love, most notably for how they performed against Ollie Gordon before he left the game with an injury.

“I know Oklahoma State fans are going to talk about Ollie Gordon. That dude’s a player. He’s a player. For us to hold him to that yard says a lot about the will of our guys,” said Brown.

Brown wants his players to enjoy the road win, but at the same time, knows they need to turn the page and focus on a ranked Iowa State team coming to Morgantown.

“I think that this league is really hard. Each week is a new challenge, and so what you have to do is you want to celebrate it. Sometimes, we don’t take enough in this profession to really celebrate. This is a really big deal,” said Brown. “We came into a tough venue versus a program that’s won 10 games a lot of times versus a head coach that’s going to be in the Hall of Fame at some point, and we played a complete game. So that’s a big deal, so we want to enjoy that. We want to enjoy the plane ride home, we want to watch the game tomorrow, and then when we flip it over to Iowa State, I know that’s a huge challenge, and it’s going to be completely different.”

For a related story, Mike Asti talked with fans during a live postgame show after the game.