What Neal Brown Said Following the Loss to Houston

West Virginia head coach Neal Brown following the loss to the Houston Cougars

The West Virginia Mountaineers (4-2, 2-1) fell to the Houston Cougars (3-3. 1-2) Saturday night 41-39. 

Opening Statement

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 its 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.

DEFENSE

Credit to them. Donovan Smith is a good player and he’s been a good player. He’s dangerous and we knew that coming in our guys were prepared. They didn’t do anything tonight that we didn’t expect them to do. We struggled to tackle. They are really fast at wideout, and we knew it was going to be a tough matchup for us and we did not tackle well, and anytime you don’t tackle well it's going to be a struggle and we did not tackle well, and they made us miss and they broke tackles and like I said, very disappointing.

Final Play of the Game

I don’t think our guy time up his jump, I’ve got to see it. I saw it live. I saw the ball in the air, and I said, ‘we lost’. As soon I saw the ball go up in the air I knew it, and we practice that, and he just didn’t time his jump up. Instead of getting up and hitting it at the high point and knocking it down he missed timed his jump and it floated and their gut caught it.

Garrett Greene's Career Night

I thought he was going to have a breakout performance and he did. He was special. Who was better on the field tonight? I felt like he was really close to a breakout performance, and he did. 

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