Neal Brown is Searching for Answers Following Beatdown From Baylor

The West Virginia Mountaineers dropped to 2-4 on the season, including losing three-straight to begin Big 12 Conference play after getting dismantled by the Baylor Bears Saturday afternoon 45-20.

"Bad football," said West Virginia head coach Neal Brown following the game. "Credit Baylor. I thought coach [Dave] Aranda and their crew were ready to go. They soundly beat us in every phase. From the point in the third quarter where we botched the onside kick, the game was never close. We did not block them; we did not consistently block them, and we never covered them. It's pretty simple if you can't block them on offense and you don't cover them on defense. It's going to be a long day and it was. Disappointing performance. Bad football. We weren't very good today."

Baylor scored on the second play of the game on a quick post over the middle to Tyquan Thornton and went untouched 75 yards for the touchdown. Baylor was able to move the ball at will and racked up 212 yards of total offense in the first quarter, and held a 21-7 advantage.

"We just got exposed a little bit," said Brown. Defensively, we've played above average at times, but we haven't been very consistent, and we've struggled with coverage."

The Bears offense came into the game averaging 209.8 yards through the air in the first five games and second in the conference in rushing yards per game at 238.2, but quarterback Gerry Bohanon had a career day posting 336 passing yards and four touchdowns, and according to Brown, it was something that had not shown on film before Saturday.

Thornton also hit a career-high with 187 receiving yards on eight receptions and tied a career-high two touchdowns.

"We haven't covered Thornton yet. He may still running out there wide open," said Brown. "We played soft. Our underneath defenders did not do a good job of getting out in the flats. We made it really easy for them to pitch the ball out there and complete it."

The Mountaineer offense struggles continued. Coming into the game, the group led the conference in sacks allowed with 10. On Saturday, they gave up six sacks.

"We didn't block them. In particular, our right side," said Brown. "It doesn't matter if you're going to run or pass - when you lose one on one battles over and over and over again, it's going to be hard. There's some fundamental issues there. There's some things that they did to take advantage of some good matchups, and we just didn't play very well. I don't know if there was a time where we had more than one or more two plays in a row where we blocked them, and they weren't sending a bunch. You're talking about five guys is pretty much what they did to send pressure."

Last week in the homecoming loss to Texas Tech, West Virginia lacked energy to start the game and the effort was not there the first 30 minutes. It appeared to be a problem again from the outset.

"I would say when you get beat like that, it's probably not what you want," said Brown.

Another area of concern has been clock management, most notably burning timeouts early the first or second half due to personnel issues. For example, on the first play from the line of scrimmage for West Virginia, they had to call a timeout, and Brown was heated on the sideline. It appeared they started the play clock early and were forced to call a timeout.

There were some other weird calls throughout the game. For example, a holding penalty was eventually overturned, and upon further review, it was clearly a hold. Of course, officiating was not the cause of the loss, but Brown voiced his frustrations following the game. Additionally, the most penalized team in the Big 12, the Baylor Bears, ended the afternoon with six penalties, three of them coming in the fourth quarter once they started subbing out the starters.

"I think it's poor officiating. I'm not real pleased of that aspect either," said Brown.

Nonetheless, Brown again credited Baylor for the win and again acknowledged the Mountaineers' poor performance.

The Mountaineers have a bye week this week, and it may not come at a better time now that they are on a three-game losing streak.

"We got to solve some issues. If you look at it through five games, we've been right there, and so we haven't been far off but today was a totally different story," said Brown. Also, adding that "everything is on the table" when it comes to resolving the issues.

"To be honest, players and coaches are going to get away for about 48 hours. We'll come back on Tuesday and get back to work on some plans on how to fix what happened today," he said.

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