Between The Eers The Morning After Houston
Between The Eers The Morning After Houston
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello everybody, welcome to Between Ears.
00:12 It is the morning after Houston
00:14 and typically this is the whole reason
00:18 I do this taping the day after the game.
00:22 We do the post game show,
00:24 it's like a 10, 12 minute show.
00:26 Last night it was 20 because there was so much to talk about
00:30 but the whole reason I do this more extended deep dive
00:34 on the game is because I want to take some time
00:39 for the game to really hit home to understand what went on
00:44 to kind of further evaluate, watch the tape so to speak.
00:51 But I mean, hours later and it's still,
00:58 like I said last night, you're at a loss for words.
01:03 You don't know what just happened,
01:05 you don't know how it just happened.
01:07 That's a tough loss for West Virginia in more ways than one.
01:14 You know, you battle back, you're down 35 of the 24,
01:20 you get back in the game,
01:22 you need a stop to get the ball back
01:24 but they get a first down, you need a stop again
01:28 they get the stop but then you're pinned
01:31 at your own 10 yard line.
01:32 You got to go 90 yards to win the game
01:34 or at least go about 60 or so to get in the field goal range.
01:38 You get to fourth and absolutely got to have it
01:44 and instead of just getting the first down,
01:46 Garrett Green hits Hudson Clement in stride
01:48 and you're strolling into the end zone
01:50 for the go ahead score with 12 seconds left.
01:57 12 seconds, it's all there is left.
02:00 There's not a whole lot of things
02:01 that can happen in 12 seconds.
02:04 Especially when you factor in, you got to kick off
02:06 on the ensuing play.
02:08 We all know where I'm going with this.
02:14 It comes down to in that moment,
02:18 now this game was not lost at all
02:22 by Garrett Green removing his helmet.
02:24 I'll say that a hundred times over throughout this thing
02:27 if I need to.
02:28 It was a part of it.
02:30 In that moment, yes, Garrett Green should not
02:35 have taken his helmet off.
02:36 But we understand that there was multiple things
02:41 that happened throughout the game that led to that loss.
02:46 Just like the Hail Mary wasn't the only thing
02:50 that beat West Virginia last night.
02:54 But in that moment, you take your helmet off,
02:59 all of a sudden 12 seconds seems like 30
03:03 because you give them terrific field position.
03:08 Just starting off by the kickoff,
03:09 that's before the ball's even knocked off the tee.
03:12 They get a somewhat decent return, wasn't nothing special.
03:17 But then you give up the little check down play
03:22 to the sideline, which I think is,
03:24 you're fine with giving that up.
03:28 It doesn't matter if they get that.
03:30 And it doesn't matter if they get 40 or so yards
03:35 on the two plays they run,
03:38 as long as they don't get in the end zone.
03:40 But when you go back and you watch that final play,
03:44 which was the Hail Mary,
03:46 I'm confused to a certain extent
03:50 because it didn't look like West Virginia
03:55 had the right either personnel out there
03:59 or they just weren't lined up right.
04:04 Something just was odd about the play.
04:07 And I don't understand why there was a linebacker
04:12 hanging down, keeping his eye on Donovan Smith.
04:17 I don't understand that whatsoever.
04:20 I mean, again, in that situation, what for?
04:25 If he takes off, let him take off.
04:27 He's got to go over 50 some yards to win the game.
04:31 And he's got to get by 11 guys,
04:34 or at the very least eight guys
04:38 when he gets past the three that were rushing.
04:40 So in that situation, I think you would have liked
04:45 to have had that defended a little bit better.
04:48 I think you would have liked your defensive backs
04:50 to have been at the goal line
04:52 and not taking their sweet time getting back there.
04:58 I just think that the Hail Mary defensive play
05:02 was a mess all over the place.
05:05 Like if I had the tape with me right now
05:09 and I could just pop it up,
05:11 you would see exactly what I'm talking about.
05:14 You need to just bring three.
05:16 And honestly, and I know some coaches
05:20 would probably never do this,
05:22 but some coaches may be like,
05:26 you know what, the hell with it.
05:27 We'll drop nine into coverage for this.
05:29 Make sure that there's no chance
05:33 that they're going to complete this thing.
05:37 But instead, West Virginia brought three, which is okay,
05:41 but you had a fourth guy lurking around as a linebacker.
05:46 It doesn't make sense.
05:47 But again, it doesn't come down
05:52 to Garrett Green removing his helmet.
05:54 It doesn't come down to the Hail Mary play.
05:56 All comes down to how do you not have this football team
06:01 ready to play coming off a bye week?
06:06 Again, I know it's a short abbreviated week
06:11 in terms of an actual bye,
06:13 because you come back on a Thursday instead of a Saturday,
06:16 but it didn't seem to affect Houston.
06:19 Houston's defense had been atrocious all season long.
06:24 They didn't miss very many tackles last night.
06:29 West Virginia did.
06:30 They couldn't stop the run game for whatever reason.
06:35 And it seemed like once Houston
06:39 kind of found their rhythm offensively,
06:41 it was a little bit of trouble for West Virginia.
06:44 When they went down 35-24 and Houston got the ball back,
06:49 you had probably a feeling similar to mine
06:56 as like, "Okay, this is probably it."
06:59 But you got to love the fight, I guess,
07:06 to not pack it in, to mail it in,
07:10 because I think easily a season or two ago,
07:13 that game probably ends 42-24,
07:17 or maybe just even 35-24, something like that.
07:22 But you go back to not having this team ready to play,
07:27 and it's an embarrassment.
07:31 Again, it really is, especially against...
07:34 I know we try not to make it about Dana and everything else,
07:39 but it's hard not to.
07:41 I mean, the guy that was here that had openly said
07:45 that you can't get West Virginia kids to,
07:50 or you can't get kids to West Virginia
07:51 to win a Big 12 title.
07:52 And again, you can make whatever out of it that you want,
07:59 but last night was an opportunity to kind of prove him wrong
08:07 and you almost did.
08:09 - How ironic would that have been,
08:10 that Hudson Clement, a West Virginia kid,
08:13 would have been the one that had the game winner?
08:17 But there's going to be excuses that float around.
08:23 There's going to be the, "Oh, they didn't have
08:26 the Tomas rematch.
08:27 They didn't have the Wyb Mylons of the world.
08:29 They didn't have the Aubrey Burks, you know, Trey Latham.
08:31 They're trying to work in Ben Cutter, da-da-da-da-da-da-da."
08:36 You're facing the worst team in the Big 12
08:41 in front of a stadium that was maybe 15 to 20% full.
08:49 You played Penn State in Happy Valley.
08:55 You played Pitt in front of a absolute
08:59 packed Mountaineer field.
09:01 You played TCU even in, it may not have been
09:05 a complete near-capacity stadium that day at A.M. and G. Carter
09:10 but there was a pretty rowdy crowd for a little bit.
09:13 This is nothing new.
09:16 If anything, this is easy going into a place like that.
09:22 You don't have to worry about the hostility of the fans.
09:28 You don't have to worry about noise being a factor.
09:32 And it almost felt like for whatever reason,
09:36 and as I put in my initial thoughts article last night,
09:40 like there was a lack of fire.
09:42 There was a lack of energy, a lack of confidence
09:45 from this team, almost from the jump.
09:48 And I don't know what that is.
09:52 I don't know if it was because there was not very many
09:54 people in the stands and that's something that this team
09:56 is fed off of all season long, be it at home or away.
10:01 But good teams create their own energy.
10:04 Good teams find ways to win.
10:06 We've talked about that through the first five weeks
10:08 when they got off to that four-on-one start.
10:11 Good teams just find ways.
10:13 Bad teams find a way to lose.
10:15 And there's still so much football left to be played.
10:22 You're halfway through the season, you're four-and-two.
10:25 At the end of the day, you're still happy with the start
10:29 through six games.
10:30 Again, you tell me that they're four-and-two
10:32 at the beginning of the season,
10:34 I'm telling you that's a hell of a start.
10:37 But it can all be washed away very, very, very quickly.
10:43 You return home next week against Oklahoma State,
10:49 and this is a game to see what you're really made of.
10:57 This is a game that's really going to show
10:59 what Neil Brown, what these coaches are about,
11:05 what these players are about,
11:07 because not only do you lose a game you shouldn't have lost,
11:13 but you lost a game in an absolute heartbreaking fashion,
11:19 something that is almost traumatizing.
11:21 Going up with 12 seconds to go,
11:24 you think you have the game won,
11:26 only to find out a couple of plays later, you lose.
11:30 That's a hard, hard deal to get over.
11:35 The good thing is,
11:37 they've got a couple of extra days to get past that,
11:40 because it was a Thursday game,
11:41 they don't play again until next Saturday.
11:44 But you're about to find out
11:47 what this team's really about.
11:49 Can they actually move on from this,
11:51 put it in the past, and use it as fuel,
11:56 use it as motivation,
11:58 and get back on track next week against Oklahoma State,
12:03 again, a team you should win, especially at home.
12:06 They're playing better, but it's still a team
12:07 that you should win at home against.
12:09 And do they stay in the Big 12 picture,
12:12 or is this the start of an absolute downfall?
12:17 Are we going to, a month from now,
12:21 go back to this Hail Mary, or go back to this Houston game,
12:24 and point this game out as,
12:26 this is where it all went downhill?
12:28 Or is this the one you circle and say,
12:32 this is the one that really kind of
12:35 was a blessing in disguise to some extent,
12:38 and really helped kind of forge the rest of the season
12:44 in a good direction?
12:45 Because I'm telling you now,
12:47 like 4-1, 2-0 start in the Big 12, that's great, it is.
12:53 But it doesn't matter when you follow it up
12:56 with a loss against one of the worst teams in the Big 12,
12:59 and it sure as heck will not matter whatsoever
13:04 if you trip up again and stub your toe again
13:09 next week against Oklahoma State,
13:10 and all of a sudden you're 4-3 and 2-2 in Big 12 play.
13:15 I mean, Neil talked all week about how this team
13:23 deserved to be ranked.
13:24 Maybe there's a reason voters didn't believe in you.
13:29 Maybe there's a reason they picked you 14th
13:32 in the preseason Big 12 poll,
13:36 and that's why they didn't rank you
13:39 after a 4-1 start,
13:41 having not beaten a single top 25 opponent.
13:45 You have to earn that number next to your name.
13:49 You have to.
13:51 And it's gonna take a long, long, long, long time
13:54 to get that number next to your name now
13:56 when you have a blemish on your schedule like you do
14:01 with no top 25 wins.
14:03 And being ranked is the last thing
14:07 that Neil needs to be worrying about.
14:09 It just is.
14:11 You go out, you take care of business,
14:13 everything else will fall into place.
14:16 If you're supposed to be ranked, you'll be there.
14:20 And who cares if you're ranked or not
14:22 after week five or week six of the season?
14:26 It doesn't matter.
14:27 Just like ESPN Bracketology, when Joe Lenardi says,
14:32 "Hey, West Virginia's gonna be a number nine seed this year."
14:35 It's October.
14:36 I don't really care about it.
14:40 We put those projections out,
14:42 and we show what those projections are
14:44 'cause the fans like it.
14:45 But it doesn't matter.
14:50 Nobody knows what that team can do.
14:54 Nobody knows how far West Virginia can go in basketball.
14:57 Nobody knows what West Virginia is really capable of
15:01 until you go out there and improve it.
15:04 And last night was a huge missed opportunity.
15:08 If you're gonna compete for Big 12 titles,
15:12 if you're gonna be in the mix in late November,
15:14 you cannot lose these types of games.
15:19 To bottom of the barrel teams.
15:21 So this is your season right here.
15:26 As hard as it is to get past, as hard as it is to bury,
15:32 you've gotta move on.
15:33 Good teams overcome adversity.
15:37 You don't want adversity, but when it comes,
15:41 there's either two outcomes
15:43 when you see adversity hit you.
15:47 You either overcome it or you let it hit you,
15:49 and you fall back to a point where you can't bounce back.
15:55 So West Virginia's got two options.
16:02 Stand up and face it or let it hit 'em.
16:04 If they let it hit 'em, this could be a situation
16:09 where you go from this tremendous four-on-one start,
16:11 you're the talk of the Big 12,
16:12 you're the talk of the country,
16:14 to Neil Brown's gotta be fighting for his job again
16:17 in late November against what is on paper
16:21 an incredibly weak schedule.
16:23 So we'll see what happens next week.
16:30 They're not out of the Big 12 title picture.
16:34 As of right now, it's one loss.
16:36 They're two and one in Big 12 play.
16:38 They're just as much in this thing as anybody else.
16:42 But if they lose next week, it's over.
16:47 So there's still a path to six wins, clearly.
16:55 There's still a path to seven or eight wins.
16:58 And I think even if you get to seven or eight,
17:00 you probably feel pretty good about where the team is.
17:04 Again, we'll see.
17:05 It depends on how those games unfold.
17:08 If it's a lot of undisciplined stuff,
17:10 if it's uncompetitive football,
17:15 maybe seven or eight wins isn't enough.
17:17 And this is exactly why I'm trying to hold off
17:23 on my judgment of Neil and the job he's done this year,
17:27 because there's a lot of runway.
17:30 And when you have a lot of runway
17:34 and there's still a lot to prove,
17:40 there's a lot of unknowns, who knows?
17:42 Does he get this thing to actually take off
17:44 or is it still stuck on the runway?
17:46 We're about to find out next Saturday.
17:51 So this one, again, you could point to it, to Garrett.
17:57 You could point to the Hail Mary.
17:58 You could point to Jalen Anderson,
18:00 not holding onto a touchdown
18:02 that turns into an interception in the end zone.
18:04 You could point to Jordan Leslie,
18:09 not having his team prepared enough.
18:13 You could point to the run game,
18:15 not being able to get anything really going
18:18 against one of the worst defenses in the Big 12.
18:22 But it's a collective thing.
18:29 You win as a team, you lose as a team,
18:30 like Neil Brown said, and it's as true as can be.
18:33 It wasn't just one defining moment,
18:36 but there's a lot of defining moments in this game
18:39 that really kind of handed it to Houston.
18:44 You can't give games away.
18:46 This is year five, year five.
18:48 These things can't happen in year five.
18:53 You can get away with it in year one and year two.
18:56 We've talked about this for the last four years.
18:58 You can get away with that in year one and two.
18:59 You can't get away with it in year four and five.
19:01 You need to win football games.
19:06 So, I mean, how do you bounce back from this?
19:11 How do you, it still blows my mind
19:17 how you come out of the bye week,
19:19 have that time to prepare against the worst,
19:22 arguably the worst team in the Big 12,
19:23 and that's what you see take place on the field.
19:27 I don't know.
19:30 And Neil can be upset all he wants,
19:36 and rightfully so,
19:38 but at the end of the day, this falls on him.
19:41 Players taking their helmets off, dumb penalties,
19:48 poor technique, poor tackling,
19:54 a lot of just bad things that happen.
19:58 That all falls on the head coach.
20:00 He's ultimately responsible.
20:06 So we'll see, does this team actually trust the climb,
20:09 or is this just a fool's gold four-in-one start?
20:16 In about eight days, we'll find out.
20:22 So that'll do it for me here today on The Morning After.
20:27 Be sure to subscribe on YouTube at Mountaineers Now.
20:33 Give us a like.
20:35 Also follow us on X at Mountaineers Now,
20:38 and we'll see what the schedule looks like here
20:41 in a couple days.
20:42 I may try to bring Eugene back on
20:44 to kind of further dive into this thing,
20:46 or maybe Chris, since we have a couple of extra days
20:50 to play with before game week starts, we'll see.
20:53 So stay tuned, subscribe so you can get that notification
20:57 when a new video does drop,
20:59 and you can take that in as well.
21:01 So thank you guys for watching,
21:03 and we'll see you soon.
21:05 Take care.
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