Full Quotes from Neal Brown's Press Conference Previewing Texas Tech
The West Virginia Mountaineers (3-1, 2-1) are getting set to hit the road to take on the Texas Tech Red Raiders (1-3, 0-3) in Lubbock. West Virginia head coach Neal Brown just wrapped up his weekly press conference and previewed this week's matchup with the media. See the full transcripts below!
OPENING STATEMENT:
"Good Big 12 win on Saturday. As you know, gets us to 3-1 overall and 2-1 in the Big 12. I thought we showed real growth on Saturday, overcame a very poor start to pull away with a convincing win. Things went about as bad as they probably could early on in that game. Proud of how our players and our staff handled that adversity in the first quarter, played through it, made adjustments. Not sure we would have reacted that way a year ago, probably the Texas Tech game a year ago is a good example of that."
RE: If improvement is noticeable in the run game
"Well I think we have to be able to uphold it. We've got to have some answers in our run game off some of the ways people are starting to defend us. I'm not ready to sit up here and announce that we've arrived. I think Leddie [Brown] has shown early through three league games that he's a really good player. I think we blocked movement better against Kansas than we had at any point in the last two years. But I think these next four weeks will kind of be the tale. You ask me this in a month, I'll have a really firm answer for you. As far as how much improvement, we're definitely better, but how much? I think the next four weeks will tell."
RE: Importance of Sam James playing at a high level
"I think that he's really talented. Hadn't performed probably up to the level that he would like or we would like. I don't think it's a lack of effort. That's where you get concerned as a coach if it's effort, if he's not preparing, not taking care of his body - none of those are issues. He just hadn't caught the ball like he wants to. My message to him is you can't be so tied into the results. What you can control is how you prepare, how hard you play, doing your job and then part of that preperation is catching balls and things like that. He's not a guy that we're giving up on by any means. He's a guy that we have a lot of trust in. He's made a bunch of plays here over the last two years and he will make plays for us this year. He's going through a little bit of a case of the drops, I think he'll bounce back. That's one of the major reasons we got him in there and we got him that ball and we got him a chance to score. I think you'll see him bounce back."
RE: Jarret Doege returning to hometown of Lubbock
"Jarret and I will talk about going back to Lubbock, but it's not something we're going to spend a lot of time on. He's been in the stadium numerous times, I don't know if he's played in there or not he may have played a high school game in there. I'm not real sure, I'll need to ask him that. But he's watched his brother play there, been there as a fan so he'll be emotional about going back and excited but he's got to be able to control those emotions. We're going to talk a lot about mindset and just staying neutral."
RE: In-game adjustments vs Kansas
"They were playing more four man front than they've ever shown and they were shifting to it really late. They were showing three man head up and then they were shifting to four man, which is something we didn't show our players which looking back I wish we would have. So really what we did after the first series and then it really showed after the second series, we got them over to the sideline and credit to Coach Moore and Tyler Orlosky and Coach Trickett with the tight ends and Coach Scott with the running backs, they got all their guys over there and we just really talked through our adjustments and how we wanted to handle it if they were going to be in a four down."
RE: Jeffery Pooler's Development
"He changed his body tremendously since January a year ago when I first saw him. He's one of the guys that Mike Joseph always uses on the before and after pictures and it's really impressive how he's changed his body. Most the time when guys come in, we're adding weight to them and bulking them up, he was a guy that came in with some excess weight and really reduced down. he's really grown up to since first meeting him. He's really matured, kind of grown into one of the leaders on the defensive side of the ball. And then just the effort he played with on Saturday, that's what I was most impressed with. It goes back to what we've been preaching defensively for the last month. If you play with extreme effort and you play physical, you've got a chance, even if you're making mistakes you've got a chance and he did. He was really impressive and how hard he played on Saturday."
RE: Special Teams Battles
"We're just going to compete week to week. Our kickoff placements haven't been exactly what we wanted them to be. Staley was better than Casey [Legg] on Saturday so he handled them (kickoffs) in the 2nd half. But we've got to be more consistent there, same with our punting, we need more hangtime and so we'll probably continue to use both of those guys in both those roles."
RE: Success in the red zone
"I think Gerad [Parker] has been beneficial. Travis Trickett has had some really good ideas going back to quarantine time. We have some different type of plays, our approach has probably been a little bit different. A lot of it has to do with guys making plays, but I think the one thing to that I think has been beneficial is that we've practiced it more intentionally. I don't think there's been a day since we've been back in July that we haven't done some type of red zone or we call it score zone once you get inside the 12."
RE: Challenge with Texas Tech's offensive line
"I really think they're good. I thought that they were good last year. They're really big, that's the first thing that sticks out to you is that they're big and they're long. If you look across their depth chart, they're big and long. They did a really good job getting their hands on us last year. They get the ball out really quick and a lot of their passes are off quick, play-action style. We didn't do a very good job of winning at the line of scrimmage, we didn't do a very good job of getting our hands up and getting hands on balls and they ran the ball really good against us. That was the worst we played in two years defensively was against them, they had a great plan, they came out and executed. They jumped on us and really held on. They won their one on one's last year and I'm sure they expect to do it again."
RE: Thoughts on Texas Tech's new starting QB Henry Colombi
"We had one our GA's go back and pull all of the Utah State stuff from during the bye week they announced he was starting during their bye week. He's more than capable, they obviously like him. They had a really good quarterback in Bowman who threw the ball, they had some issues at Iowa State. Colombi came in and really if you look at it their scoring drives over the last two games have been led by him. He's a dual-threat guy, he gets the ball out of his hands super fast, he;s got a quick release, he's athletic, obviously knows the offense being in it for multiple years so we know he's going to be a challenge."
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