Neal Brown is Ready to Move On From Houston Loss

Better days are ahead for WVU football.

As much as last Thursday night's loss to Houston stings, you have to bury it. It's a game that should have never come down to a Hail Mary and Neal Brown and his team know it.

It's a feeling and a moment that is hard to shake, but they have no choice. They've got a tough Oklahoma State team coming to town this weekend and the season is on the line.

"We're 2-1 in the conference now. We're 4-2. Flip the page. I'm looking forward to it," said Brown. "We got started today and I'm going to talk about that game. I'm going to answer the questions and then I'm not going to talk about it the rest of the time. We're moving forward and Tony (Caridi) will have to come up with some new material through the week as he and I do our stuff because I'm done after this press conference. We're going to learn from it and move on."

How the team responds is the biggest area of concern. Does this one game mark the start of a second-half-of-the-season collapse? Or does it drive this team to an incredibly strong finish to where they are true contenders in the Big 12 title race? Brown spoke on how painful the last few days have been and the process of moving forward.

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"We put a ton of time and a ton of investment into it, so when you lose and you lose in that fashion, man, it matters. The first thing is, there's a little bit of a grieving process that goes through. It's helpful because we've got a little bit more time and then once you go through the grieving process, you got to take ownership for what is ours. 

"Credit Houston. That's the best they've played. They played extremely hard. They were hungry. They made the play at the end of the game to win it, so I'm not minimizing them by any means. But we lost the game. I can go through probably 15 plays on offense, about 20 plays on defense, and about six on special teams where we lost the game. So you go through the ownership and then it's about the response. You can't control what happens all the time, but you can control your response. So our response is we better fight and we better put better stuff on tape or it's going to be a long year."

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