Neal Brown Explains What Lost WVU the Game

The head coach of the Mountaineers gives his thoughts on what transpired in Houston Thursday night.

As I noted in my Friday Morning Thoughts article, West Virginia didn't just lose Thursday night's game to Houston on a Hail Mary. Yes, it is technically the game-winning play, but several things occurred before that had a major impact on the game and its outcome.

Friday Morning Thoughts: What Are You Going to Do About It?

West Virginia just didn't play its best football and because of it, they were handed their first Big 12 loss of the season. 

In his postgame press conference, WVU head coach Neal Brown took a few minutes to explain why the Hail Mary at the end was not the reason why they are now 4-2.

"First of all, everybody is going to want to talk about the last play of the game, we had multiple chances to win the game and we didn’t do it. I’m not very pleased on how we played on two out of the three phases – Defensively and special teams, we did not play good enough. We absolutely did not play good enough.

"Where we lost the game is discipline, and that’s what has gotten us to this point, and we weren’t a disciplined team tonight. We had eight penalties. I don’t know how the game was officiated. I’m not into criticizing them because we didn’t play very well. The celebration penalty after the last touchdown is kind of a microcosm to me of the game, we don’t get that celebration penalty, which is completely asinine for us to take our helmets off, I don’t understand it. They are going to give you the benefit of the doubt, they don’t really want to call that but if you take your helmet off it's pretty clear and I don’t understand that and that gave them an opportunity to get into scoring position. We would have squibbed it regardless, it worked out, but I think our lack of discipline and we didn’t win the line of scrimmage. We didn’t run the ball great offensively. Probably the most we struggled to run the football and they did. If you look at their yards per carry and our yards per carry it’s not close.

"If you look at the stat sheet it doesn’t make sense but that's why you played the game, and we absolutely did not play well enough on defense and special teams tonight to win the game.

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