West Virginia head coach Neal Brown feels his team is at a turning point in their season.

Coming off a last-second loss to Houston, the Mountaineers return home Saturday to face Oklahoma State. The Cowboys are coming off of two consecutive wins over teams ranked in the top 25. Before that though, they struggled. They lost to South Alabama at home and then to Iowa State on the road.

“I think Oklahoma State’s one of the hottest teams in the country. I really credit Coach Gundy and his staff. They had a low point, they get beat at home by South Alabama but they’ve rebounded well,” Brown said.

Following a little bit of a reset, the Cowboys now find themselves playing some of their best football, something Brown hopes he can get WVU to do after the heartbreak at Houston.

“They went up to Ames, lost a close game (to Iowa State), took a bye week, and off that bye week they’ve won two games versus ranked opponents. You can tell during that bye week they went back and really simplified what they were doing on offense and defense. Just really impressed with the turnaround they’ve made. You can tell they’re playing with a lot of confidence right now.”

That type of turnaround is what the Mountaineers are hoping to do when they host the Cowboys this Saturday.

A large part of that equation though falls on the shoulders of West Virginia’s defense and getting back to where they were prior to Houston. While the last play Hail Mary Pass will be what’s remembered the most, defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said there were dozens of plays missed by his defense.

“Outside of the one I know everyone wants to talk about, we had 27 chances. 27 different plays,” Lesley said of where the game could have been won against Houston.

Lesley’s defense will be focused on stopping the run first and foremost against Oklahoma State. Running back Ollie Gordon is sixth in the Big 12 in rush yards per game and in the Cowboys have had their two highest rushing totals of the year in their last two games. In last year’s matchup between these two teams, Gordon rushed for 136 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries.

“They’re focused on running the football,” Brown said. “I think the difference has been Ollie Gordon at running back. He was special last week and he’s a tough tackle. Runs as hard as anybody in our league.”

In the secondary, the Mountaineers are going to have to stop quarterback Alan Bowman. Bowman faced WVU when he was at Texas Tech in 2018, and has been good over the last two games. Bowman has thrown for 571 yards and two touchdowns over that stretch, but more importantly has not turned the ball over.

“He’s been through the league. He’s experienced. Bowman’s been at Texas Tech and had some really good success,” Brown said. “He’s settled down and he’s playing well.”

If the Mountaineers are going to have success against Oklahoma State this week, their best players are going to have to play well — which according to Brown and Lesley, is something they did not do against Houston.

“You do this long enough, you hope those games don’t show up. But if and when they do, it’s got to be your best players that pull you out of whatever that funk is that day. We didn’t. We didn’t play well,” Lesley said.

Lesley would continue to hit home the message of his best players needing to step up, saying the standard doesn’t change from high school to the professional level.

“Your best players have to play well. And it doesn’t how long they do this, if you’re the best player, there’s an expectation of how you play. I don’t think thats any different from high school to the NFL,” Lesley said. “There’s a specific expectation on how you should play every week. That’s why you’re the best player. It has more to do with talent. But that’s the expectation.”

On the flip side of the ball, the Mountaineers will look to build off of their best offensive performance under Brown. Quarterback Garrett Greene was just shy of 400 yards passing against Houston, with his lone interception of the year coming on a dropped pass he threaded between two defenders and into the numbers of Jaylen Anderson.

“It’s really what I thought we could be when we got all the pieces together,” Brown said of the offense against Houston.

Brown said he’s talked to his quarterback about both the positives and the negatives from the Houston game but that he looks for him to still be himself going forward.

“Without him we got no chance in that game. He made us go,” Brown said.

“What makes him great is he has this exuberant energy. I wish I had his energy,” said Brown. “He doesn’t have very many bad days, he’s always upbeat, he’s bouncing around. But also you got to be able to limit that. What makes him great is sometimes his achilles heel whether that’s playing quarterback or that’s celebrating a touchdown. 

As far as improving on his performance, Brown was very pleased with how Greene handled everything that was thrown at him. Brown said he gave his quarterback added responsibility both on the ground and through the air.

“He played extremely well, probably as good as we’ve played at that position here in a long time. He still left some plays out there but he played really, really well,” Brown said. “Running the football, his decision making, that’s the best in a game situation his decision making has been. We put a ton on him in the run read game and the throw game.”

Both teams will enter Saturday at 2-1 in the Big 12. The winner will certainly keep their hopes of making the Big 12 Championship alive, as both teams still have Oklahoma on their schedule, who is the lone undefeated team in the conference.

Oklahoma State has won seven of the last eight games in this matchup and West Virginia has only won once at home (2013) since joining the Big 12. The Mountaineers are also looking for their first back to back wins over the Cowboys since 2013-2014.

Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. from Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, with the game set to be televised on ESPN.