Initial Thoughts on West Virginia's Fourth Home Loss of the Season

A few takeaways from West Virginia's loss to Baylor.

Ben Queen-Imagn Images

The West Virginia Mountaineers fell to the Baylor Bears Saturday evening, 49-35, bringing them back to the .500 mark at 5-5. The loss is also WVU's first against Baylor in Morgantown and also pretty much eliminates them from any hope of making it to Dallas for the Big 12 championship game.

Let's go ahead and get into some of my takeaways from today's game.

This defense can't be fixed

While the Mountaineers showed some improvement last week in Cincinnati, they took about 17 and a half steps back in the loss to Baylor. From the very beginning, the Bears had their way with Jeff Koonz's unit. Poor tackling, not fitting gaps, not dropping to the proper depth in zone coverage, and very little push up front.

While there will be a lot of finger-pointing toward Koonz, he's not the main culprit. It's Neal Brown. He's the head coach, and the fact that he made the switch from Lesley and the defense is still poor against the pass shows that the personnel either isn't good enough, doesn't fit the scheme, or perhaps a mix of both.

The only way this side of the ball will get better is by hitting the portal hard this offseason and some major improvements from some of the youngsters. Nothing is going to change in the final two games of this season.

Garrett Greene's return

There was a lot of uncertainty about who would start at quarterback in this game for the Mountaineers, with Garrett Greene finally returning to being a full participant at practice this week. Although the final numbers in the passing game weren't impressive, there were several passes dropped by Mountaineer receivers, ultimately docking his completion percentage.

He definitely put some passes in harm's way (including the interception) and airmailed a couple of throws, but if he had some help, it would have been a better day for No. 6.

Poor complimentary football

When the West Virginia defense finally strung together several stops to begin the second half, the offense went into a shell once it got deep into Baylor territory. Neal Brown relied way too much on the legs of Garrett Greene and the horizontal run game, which put them in several 3rd down and long situations.

WVU had a chance to not only tie the game up but even take the lead thanks to the defense pitching a third quarter shutout. The offense didn't help out whatsoever.

Struggles at home

All the hype for Penn State = flat performance. All the hype for the Coal Rush = flat performance. All the hype for a bounce-back opportunity versus Kansas State = flat performance.

Tonight's game didn't have all the hype surrounding it, but it was a must-win game for the Mountaineers in order to remain in the Big 12 title chase. If you can't win the ones at home, you're never going to compete for anything. It'll be interesting to see what kind of crowd turns out for the home finale next Saturday.

Weak conference wins over the past two years

The tweet says it all.

Here are Neal Brown's Big 12 wins over the last two seasons, along with that team's conference record.

2023
Texas Tech 5-4
TCU 3-6
UCF 3-6
BYU 2-7
Cincinnati 1-8
Baylor 2-7

Combined: 16-38

2024
Kansas 2-4
Oklahoma State 0-7
Arizona 2-5
Cincinnati 3-3

Combined: 7-19

— Schuyler Callihan (@Callihan_) November 17, 2024

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