It was not a pleasant showing for West Virginia in their week one loss to Penn State, but all the team can do now is look forward and improve.
The Mountaineers dealt with ball security issues and couldn’t find a rhythm on offense, while their defense struggled to stop a ferocious Nittany Lion offense. During the United Bank Playbook with Tony Caridi, WVU head coach Neal Brown was blunt about his team’s performance in week one.
“We didn’t play well enough in week one. And below standard in two out of our three phases (offense and defense),” Brown said. “Regardless of opponent, regardless of location, regardless of week and schedule, we’ve got to step it up and play up to our expectations.”
Heading into week two, Brown clearly outlined what needs to improve for his squad as a whole.
“We just got to be consistent and we’ve got to do little things much better,” Brown said. “Functioning football on offense, catching snaps, getting the snaps where they’re supposed to be, holding onto the football, running people off when you’re supposed to run them off in the run game. And then defensively, it’s about aligning and playing your gap responsibilities. [Those were] our main issues. And then communication, our communication was not good enough. And so we got to do those things that take no talent; those are the things we got to do much better this week compared to the first game.”
West Virginia will host Albany in week two. Although the Great Danes are an FCS team, Brown highly regards them.
“They’ve won. I think anytime you have an opponent that is used to winning, those are hard outs. And if you look at what Albany’s done, FCS semi-finalist a year ago, have had a lot of success in the CAA (Coastal Athletic Association), that’s a league that I’ve played in and coached in, got a lot of respect for that league in general. And they’ve played quality football,” Brown said.
With last week’s loss in mind, Brown stated the outlook for his team going forward.
“I just want to see us play the game the right way and I want to see us play up to our abilities. We didn’t do that (against Penn State),” Brown said. “I can handle losing, but we lost on Saturday without playing up to our capabilities. That’s what I want to see. We’re going to have a really good football team. One game will not define our season, not define who we are and we’re going to play better football and it’ll start on Saturday.”
Saturday’s kickoff is set for 6 p.m. EST with the game being streamed to ESPN+.