What Neal Brown Said Following the Loss to Oklahoma State

The West Virginia Mountaineers (4-3, 2-2) dropped its Homecoming game to the Oklahoma State Cowboys (5-2, 3-1) Saturday afternoon 38-24.

Opening Statement

Crazy fourth quarter. I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a game like that. This one stings more than even the one last week. I wrote down the string of events here. Let’s see if I can get this right.

We’re up four, 24-20, at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Fourteen minutes and some change, and we run into our own punt returner. So, we get back up four with 14 minutes to go. I can’t explain it. I can’t explain that one. We work that twice a week - that very situation. It’s a hard one for me to explain. They score, and it’s 27-27. We go back down to score a field goal to tie it up at 27-27. They get the ball somewhere around the 30-yard line, give or take. They get the ball at the 29-yard line, and its third-and-4. I thought our guy was clearly held on the attack. They ran out of the stack formation to the field. I thought (redshirt senior safety) Marcis Floyd, clear right out in the open and missed a tackle. (Redshirt sophomore wide receiver) Preston (Fox) goes in to score 34-27. We get the ball at midfield, fourth-and-2, and I felt like we were struggling which was proved right. We were struggling with the tackle, so we went for it right there. Really, we should have handed it off. (junior quarterback) Garrett (Greene) played his tail off. He really played his tail off and gave us a chance to win it. Sometimes he thinks he’s Superman and he can make all the plays, but that read told him to get it. And he’s got to get it. I’m not faulting him. He’s the whole reason we had a chance. He was really good. They (Oklahoma State) get the ball at midfield and then from there Ollie Gordon had 150 yards in the fourth quarter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I’ve never been a part of a team that has given up 150 yards in a quarter to somebody. I don’t know if we tackled him in the fourth quarter. We’re certainly frustrated. I thought our offense really competed and got us back into it. On that last drive, I thought we clearly got interfered with on (junior tight end) Kole Taylor’s first-down play down there. I’ll have to get an explanation on that one, but I thought we’d score there and kick it again and see what we had. That’s kind of disappointing to say the least. I thought this was a game going into the fourth quarter, we had a chance. Really had a chance to go up and take a seven or 11-point lead. Some mistakes that I have a hard time explaining.

On the defensive performance in the fourth quarter

Without watching it, we didn’t fit the runs. They weren’t doing anything special. They were in split zone. It’s probably our first or second most-called game here. It’s something we see every day, but it surprised us. They got the pistol maybe a little bit more than they have in previous games. Other than that, we just missed a bunch of tackles and ran by the ball. That’s what it looked like from the sideline. I may tell you something different on Monday, but we ran right by the ball and missed tackles.

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