What Neal Brown Said Following the Loss to No. 11 Iowa State

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown gives his initial loss following the game

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

The West Virginia Mountaineers (3-3, 2-1) fell to the Iowa State Cyclones (6-0, 3-0) Saturday night 28-16.

Opening Statement

Two things that stick out is we had two turnovers, they had zero, and it resulted in 14 points, and we had seven penalties and they had one. And, I will say at note we were leading the country, check me on that, (WVU was ranked second in penalties with 18 and third in yards with 141 – led Big 12 in both categories) I believe were leading the country in that category coming into the game. And so, disappointing. The table was kind of set and in the second half when it was winning time, we didn’t win. So, disappointing performance.

I thought our guys fought, they competed but they made a couple more plays than we did.

Defensively, we hung in there. If you told me going into it that we were going to out rush them and we were nine of 13 on third downs, I would have felt pretty good about that. But not necessarily redzone but we had it on the fringe and we weren’t able to convert that. We had the interceptions when we were down there. We had the missed field goal that I thought was critical, and then we got it down there again in the fringe area and had to kick a field goal and so those hurt us.

That’s a good football team, they are worthy of their ranking, and credit (Iowa State head coach Matt) Campbell and their staff they do a really good job, and they won the game.

Offensively, I thought we did some good things, we just struggled to get into a rhythm. We only ran 64 plays. Only had to punt twice, but again, the two turnovers hurt us. I thought one of them was one hundred percent pass interference, and the second one was a bad decision.

Bad Snaps

(Center Brandon) Yates has a little bit of a hand issue but they were a factor – that’s fair. Three of them resulted in negative plays but there was probably eight to 10 in a game.

Thoughts on changing centers mid-game

We did [have thoughts of taking Yates out of the game] and whether we should have or shouldn’t have, that’s probably up for discussion, but Brandon had played so well. He’s are starting center and he’s going to be our starting center this year. Landon’s (Livingston) got a bright future but he’s clearly our best option right there. Because we’re right here in the middle of season I didn’t think that was the right move from a confidence standpoint and so that’s why we decided to stick with him.