What Neal Brown Said Following the Win over Cincinnati
The West Virginia Mountaineers (7-4, 5-3) dismantled the Cincinnati Bearcats (3-8, 1-7) Saturday evening 42-21.
Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports
Opening statement
Great win. Appreciate the fans for showing up. I thought the sun was going to be out and it was going to be warm, but the stadium clouded over about three minutes in, so I appreciate them toughing it out. On a day that we honored the all-time winningest coach, the most successful coach, and one of the best men that has been in the game of college football. I think it’s only fitting his first game as a head coach here at West Virginia was against Cincinnati, he gets immortalized in the stadium in a game that we won convincingly versus Cincinnati, and so, had a little extra pressure on us to come out and win today with him getting honored, but I’m glad we could get it done. I’m glad our crowd gave him a long ovation there. The event last night, a ton of former players and people connected to the program during his tenure were there and I’m just glad he got to enjoy that and what a well-deserved, well-earned honor and just happy for him and his family.
The next group is really happy for the guys that walked today. You look at those guys, there’s a core group there that really has established the standard of how we work here. Those guys are going to be sorely missed when this is all done this year.
They came out and performed. That’s a really hard emotional deal. If you haven’t done it, this is a physical game, there’s only one way to play it, and you have to walk on the field and you see your family members there and immediately your mind goes to all the years you’ve been playing football and then how fast this whole college deal went and then about two minutes after that, you got all these emotions that flowing through you, then you got to go out and play a regular game, and those not only did that, but played at a really high level.
We finished really strong here at home. The last two home games were resounding wins. Five and one at home. We’d love to have the one we let get there in the fourth quarter, but this is a tough place to play, and I thought we did a nice job playing some really good football here for the home fans.
Quarterback Garrett Greene’s 364 yards of total offense and four touchdowns
I thought Garrett bounced back. Last week was the first time he hadn’t had success this year. There’s been varying levels of success, but he really just didn’t play well. He’s the ultimate competitor. There’s a lot of skills that he has as far as being able to throw the ball and run and those kinds of things. The best trait that he has is his competitiveness. That ate at him last week that he didn’t feel like he gave us an opportunity because he wasn’t at his best and he took that personal, and he came back and performed. He was on from the very beginning. He threw some really, really good deep balls, and he had some pressure, especially early in the game and thought he stepped up. He did a much better job on scramble plays of getting out and running and hitting guys in stride, looking to be a passer.
Jaheim White’s 204 yards rushing and 75-yard touchdown reception
I thought he broke tackles. I don’t know how many yards he had, but it was a bunch. That was a really difficult catch he had on the touchdown. It was 7-0 at the time, and that made it 14-0 which really put us in a position that we could really get out in front of them.
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