WVU Football Preps for Mock Game Week

Nine days remain before the Backyard Brawl opens WVU's 2022 regular season.

WVU head coach Neal Brown is officially in preparation mode for Week 1.

Starting with standard practice on Tuesday, the remainder of this week is being spent mentally and physically preparing for the schedule of a Thursday night game. This week-long visualization exercise is even complete with a mock game on Thursday night under the lights at Milan Puskar Stadium. It may not be Acrisure Stadium in front of a sold-out crowd on Sept. 1, but Brown wants his team to feel confident amid the shifting schedule.

"We had our last scrimmage on Thursday night," Brown said. "We met on Friday, didn't have anything on Saturday, and then started what we're calling a 'mock game week'. We'll get into some Pitt as we go, but this is more of a mock game week, kind of train our guys to get ready for what the game week is actually going to be.

"We'll get really into Pitt prep on Friday. Do a mock game on Thursday... We're going to work some Pitt this week, don't get me wrong, but real, in-depth preparation will start on Friday."

Although the countdown to the season opener stands at nine days, Brown didn't seem particularly concerned about following through with scouting the Panthers quite yet. Instead, his position was based on the amended mindset and scheduling of an adapted game week.

"We did a traditional Tuesday practice yesterday," Brown said. "We'll do a Wednesday practice today. We'll do our Thursday walk-through, a fast Friday, and then our mock game, where we just go over a bunch of scenarios in the stadium Thursday night under the lights."

"We'll go to the hotel," Brown said. "We're not going to spend the night, but we'll go to the hotel just so they know, for a home game, what it looks like and how we maneuver. We'll take them on the path we take and the Mantrip and so on."

Nine days remain between now and when the 2022 Mountaineers debut at Acrisure Stadium at 7 p.m. ESPN College Gameday's coverage will begin an hour prior.

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