Quick Hits: Pat White and Pat McAfee returning to Morgantown, Nicco's spring game, Greene's spring development

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown gave his thoughts on the Gold-Blue Spring Game

West Virginia University head coach Neal Brown talking with the media following the 2024 Gold-Blue Spring Game / Christopher Hall

The West Virginia University football program held its annual Gold-Blue Spring Game Saturday afternoon.

Head coach Neal Brown sat with the media following the intersquad scrimmage and gave his evaluation following the conclusion of the spring practice period.

Opening Statement

Really good day to back in Milan Puskar [Stadium}. I Appreciate the fans for being here. I thought it was a great atmosphere for a spring game. I tried to make it fun, something different. A lot of fans on the field right now interacting with our players. A lot of young, maybe future Mountaineers that are out there. So, I think that's a really good experience for them.

We had a ton of recruits here, both ’25, ’26. Almost every one of the players that's in our ‘24 class that haven't enrolled yet. Most of our walk on class that's coming in in July they were here.

I'm very, very thankful for Pat White, and Pat McAfee coming back. (Tight ends coach) Blaine (Stewart) definitely played a role in getting them back and wanted to do something where they could be around our players.

Pat White's been coaching and so, he's been tied up and he hasn't had an opportunity to get back. So, to get him back here and kind of reintroduce him to our players. I think them watching him and understand it man, like what a special talent he was. And then

Pat McAfee who's probably the most recognizable face that's associated with West Virginia right now. And I thought it was important to be in a situation where he could be around our players, and it wasn't something that we wanted to over promote or anything like that. It just wanted to get him back around the football program. So, very appreciative of them. That added something our guys were excited about that, and our fans were.

Overall thoughts on the spring practice period

To be determined, as far as football. There's some things that I thought were really good and there's some things that we got to get better at. Going later, you're always hesitant to tackle, so we didn't tackle as much today as we have probably in the in the previous spring games just because we're so much later. But I think we did come out of it relatively healthy.

I wanted to put pressure on our specialists and where they had to perform with all eyes on them. It's kind of the first tee mentality. You step up to that first tee and all the eyes are on you and you got to perform. And so, like Michael Hayes came out and piped one and then we brought (redshirt sophomore) RJ (Kocan) in and RJ went 54 [yards] and he's had a great spring. And so that was impressive and (redshirt senior) Leighton Bechdel who's been in our program, he's a phenomenal holder., but he had some big balls in front of Pat McAfee. I thought that was pretty cool and he had some big punts today, so happy for him.

These guys that that are stepping into bigger roles. I wanted to have them show our fan base what to expect. It could be new guys like (freshman) Zae Jennings. He’s a guy that we're really excited about. He showed up today, quite a bit. Maybe it's a guy like Josiah Trotter that redshirted last year and is getting better. Tray Lathan, who’s coming off an injury. A couple offensive linemen, Johnny Williams, Nick Cray, those type of guys that are going to step into increase roles. This spring game is the first time that they've been put out there and so I wanted to see them perform and I thought those guys did a pretty good job.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback Nicco Marchiol's Gold-Blue Spring Game performance

He’d like to have that one throw right before half back. Those are great teaching moments. Six seconds, it's hard to replicate that in practice and so I'm glad we got it on tape because we can coach off of it. The deal is you got six seconds and so, you want to make sure you got to throw it in the endzone, or you got to kill the clock and give yourself a chance to get three points. The only thing you can't do there is turn it over and he didn't see him. That's a teachable moment. It'll help make all those quarterbacks better because that's something we can talk about as we're teaching situational football moving through the summer, but he's very much improved. One of our most improved players on our entire team.

Senior quarterback Garrett Greene's spring development

The start of the spring was tough for him because he lost his grandfather and so that was an emotional time.

On Tuesday of this week, he had a really sharp practice. Thursday, we did like a red zone period, he was really sharp. Today, he was he was he was okay. He wasn't great. He wasn't bad. He missed one hitch. The play that's going to upset him is the one where he could have made the play on the pass. I will say this, those are hard catches because the ball was kind of right over his head but that's the one that he's going to lose sleep over is not catching that touchdown pass.