Neal Brown on West Virginia's defense vs. Houston: 'By far the worst performance of the year'

The West Virginia Mountaineers fell on the road to the Houston Cougars 41-39. And after the game, Mountaineers head coach Neal Brown was none too thrilled with his defense. During the postgame press conference, Brown took the West Virginia defense to task, calling their showing against Houston ‘the worst performance of the year.’

“Defensively, our best players can play very well. Anytime your best players don’t play very well, you’re gonna struggle and our best players didn’t play good enough. By far the worst performance of the year,” said Brown.

West Virginia’s offense was impressive on the night with 546 yards of total offense and went 13-19 on 3rd downs. However, their defense struggled to contain the Houston offense at any point in the game. Brown blamed their shortcomings on several reasons as he continued to rip apart his defense.

“It starts with poor fundamentals. Our pad level was high, we didn’t shed blocks, we missed a lot of tackles, we needed to dominate with the front six, and we didn’t. Our pass coverage wasn’t good enough, our zone drops were off, we gave up way too many easy completions, and a lot of that has to do with underneath defenders. We just didn’t get to our spots.

“They scored touchdowns on five out of their last seven drives. The longest one was six plays, and we had zero takeaways. So just absolutely wasn’t good enough.”

West Virginia drops to 4-2 on the season and 2-1 in conference play. Up next for the Mountaineers is a home game against Oklahoma State, with whom they share a similar record overall and in conference play. Brown and the Mountaineers must find a way to bounce back defensively against the Cowboys if they want to keep pace in the tightly contested Big 12 conference this season.

West Virginia loses to Houston on last second hail Mary

West Virginia has experienced heartbreak. With 12 seconds left in the fourth quarter and a whole field ahead of it, Houston squeezed out a 41-39 win by way of a game-winning 49-yard hail Mary.

With no time left on the game clock, Houston QB Donovan Smith launched a bomb to the end zone. After the ball bobbled from hand to hand for what felt like an eternity, the pigskin landed in Stephon Johnson’s hands. Ball game.

To add insult to injury, West Virginia was on the edge of a miraculous win. With 7:24 left in the fourth quarter, the Cougars took a commanding 35-24 lead over the Mountaineers. WVU clawed back, cutting its deficit to 35-32 with just under four minutes left in the game.