Neal Brown Gets the 'Disappointment' and 'Frustration' From the Fans
The West Virginia Mountaineers dropped their home-opener to the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday 55-42.
The Mountaineers were 13.5-point favorites heading into the game, and it appeared the rout was on when West Virginia went up 14-0 in the first quarter.
However, the Jayhawks hung around with a dual-threat quarterback in Jalon Daniels, keeping the Mountaineer defense on its heels, throwing for 219 yards and three touchdowns while registering 66 yards on the ground for the night.
In the end, Kansas racked up 200 rushing yards, 419 yards in total on the way to the Jayhawks first win in Morgantown with a 55-42 win in overtime and moving to 2-0 on the season. Meanwhile, the Mountaineers fell to 0-2.
Head coach Neal Brown addressed his frustration to open the postgame press conference.
"On a day what should have been a celebration for West Virginia fans everywhere with (West Virginia men's basketball coach Bob Huggins) Huggs going into the Hall of Fame, I apologize to our fans. Not good enough."
Brown pointed to the defense and the two turnovers for the Mountaineers' loss before being asked to address the fans' frustrations in the 0-2 start.
"I get the disappointment," said Brown. "We lose two games right there at the end. One in overtime and one there at the end where we were driving to tie the game. I get the frustration. I can promise you now, there’s nobody more frustrated than me. Not that that’s going to make them feel any better. But I get the frustration. They showed up – I thought they were loud at the appropriate times today. They held in there through the rain. The students were there in big numbers early on."
"It's like I told our team. We’re two games into this and neither game was the result we wanted it to be but it’s a long year and we’re going to get better," continued Brown. "We have to get better. There’s only one way to do it, go back to work – we’ll go back to work tomorrow but I get the frustration. I get the frustration but I can tell you, it’s not going to be from a lack of effort."
West Virginia receiver Bryce Ford-Wheaton says the team is not ready to give up.
"Definitely disappointing but we're not discouraged," he said. "There's still 10 guaranteed games left, we can choose to bow-up and flip this thing or feel sorry for ourselves and go down the wrong path which we're not going to do."
West Virginia is back in action next Saturday as the Mountaineers host Towson with kickoff set for 1:00 pm.
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