What Neal Brown Said Following the Loss to Baylor

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown gives his initial thoughts on the loss to the Bears

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

The West Virginia Mountaineers (5-5, 4-3) dropped its third consecutive home game of the season after the Baylor Bears (6-4, 4-3) delivered their first win in Morgantown in seven attempts Saturday night, 49-35.

Opening statement

Great atmosphere. I thought the fans were into it – loud, causing them some issues in the second and third quarter and they’re upset and they should be. We haven’t played well at home and we’ll have a losing record at home. Some of that’s due to the people we’re playing and I’ll (Baylor head coach) credit Dave (Aranda) and his group in this game right here. I think they’re talented. I think they’re playing their best football right now. They were obviously fresh coming off the bye and they outplayed us in the second half and it’s disappointing.

The game was there to win in the third and early in the fourth and we just didn’t get it done. We have a disappointed group downstairs – staff, players. And, I told them I love them – thats unconditional. We didn’t play good enough.

What we haven’t been able to do consistently this year is all three groups play together at one time. It was a microcosm tonight. In the first half, offensively, we functioned at a really high level. Defense didn’t play very well and special teams we didn’t play very well. And then the second half comes around, much improved in special teams. The third quarter, we get three or four stops right there and then offensively we don’t play well, and it comes down to executing on critical downs and that’s where we struggled.

Offense

The stats look good. We were balanced but we didn’t get it done during winning time. We had I think two fourth downs there in the third quarter when the game was a seven-point game and the game was a seven-point game for maybe three or four possessions but we just didn’t do a good enough job on third or fourth down.

Defense

Really the same issues that plagued us all year showed up again tonight. We had struggled with the pass – they threw for 329 yards. And then, third and fourth down, we didn’t get off the field – they were nine of 13.

These kids at Baylor ran hard. 34 (Baylor wide receiver Josh Cameron) is big. He’s not your normal receiver. They really got after us physically on the perimeter. I thought that’s really were it showed up. 34 broke tackles. They blocked us – we really struggled getting off blocks.

Special teams

Our specialists struggled tonight. Ollie’s (Straw) had a great week and he struggled. A couple of punts that were really short that left us with our backs against the wall. And then, they had the long kickoff return where we didn’t have a really good kick – we didn’t have much hang time at all.