WVU players confident they can bounce back
MORGANTOWN — Funny, isn’t it, we have this tendency to look back upon what has come to be known as “the good old days” as “the better old days” rather than the “good old days”, although that may not be the case.
Nostalgia in sports has always reigned supreme. Roger Maris was villainized for challenging Babe Ruth’s sacred single-season home run record, just as Henry Aaron was for breaking Babe’s career home run mark.
No matter who they may be, to the old-timers Jim Brown and Gayle Sayers and Earl Campbell and Bo Jackson will always be the best of football’s running backs and in this neck of the woods, no one will ever be as good as Jerry West, no matter how much technology and training methods may be creating a far greater athlete.
That’s just life as we see it, those good old days being a different era for those who are 40 than for those who are 60 and for those who are 80, and while memories are taxed to recall which key opens the front door, we recall every pitch Sandy Koufax ever threw and every home run Ted Williams hit.
But times really do change, and often it improves the species. Although, as we go through a setback like West Virginia’s loss to Pitt last weekend, it really isn’t different from the 2007 disaster in substance, even if far more was riding on the outcome.
And Bobby Bowden blowing a Backyard Brawl lead of 35-8 at halftime against Pitt in the 1960s had fans grumbling about dismissing him, just as they now are firing Neal Brown and defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley on social media.
What doesn’t change is that the coach has to find a way to fix his problems, some of which are in his coaching, some in his players’ performance and some of which exist simply in the minds of the players. That may be the priority area to be addressed for WVU as they await Saturday’s Big 12 opener at home against Kansas.
These days, teams are armed with strength coaches and nutritionists to aid the physical aspect of recovery, they have the technology to monitor sleep and physical activity, and they have a sports psychologist to help not only the players with whatever mental effects there are but for the coaches on how to handle the matter best.
In those “good old days” a coach like Bear Bryant would get mad and make you practice longer and harder, driving his team in practice, but today this approach has been minimized by both sanity and rules changes, but Neal Brown knows that you can’t baby it, either.
“When you lose, and lose a rivalry game when you were ahead in the final minutes, there’s going to be negativity,” Brown said on Monday as he began his week of resuscitation. “You just have to process it, own your own mistakes and go about being better.”
While fans spend a week griping on social media, players must spend that same week completely differently, building their attitude and confidence back up along with creating a memory of how bad the losing experience is that they will do what is necessary to avoid it this week.
“I’m not going to allow them to be miserable, not going to allow them to hang their heads,” Brown said. “We’re going to get better.”
It is a challenge with Kansas, who has a dynamic quarterback in Jaylon Daniels trying to gain the form he had before being injured last year, and running back Devon Neal, the top career returning Power 4 running back. They are a team that, like WVU, felt itself to be a Big 12 contender this season but also is off to a 1-2 start, facing not only all the challenges the Mountaineers have but must also do it on the road in Morgantown.
The Mountaineer players believe they can turn things around, having done it before. Center Brandon Yates saw it happen in 2022 when WVU had lost four of five games, giving up 40 or more points in three of them and 31 or more in all four losses.
But they won two of the final three games, beating Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.
Then in 2021, they lost three in a row, including crushing three-point defeats to Oklahoma and Texas Tech before winning four of the final seven games.
“I think back to 2021 when we lost to Texas Tech,” Yates said. “We were expected to win that game and that was a turning point in that season because I feel like if we would have won, it would have changed the season. There were a lot of times after that game when I feel like we could have turned it around and fixed it.”
At Oklahoma State last season, transfer wide receiver Jaden Bray saw the Cowboys lose a non-conference game to South Alabama and then lose the Big 12 opener to Iowa State. The season was on the verge of going down the drain, as is WVU’s now, but Mike Gundy’s team won 7 of its next 8 games and got to the Big 12 championship.
“That came from not looking at the outside noise and realizing that the only people who knew what was going on were the people that were there every day and out there practicing,” Bray explained. “It comes from what type of team we were and what we thought we could achieve.
“It’s locking in and making more sacrifices on and off the field,” Bray continued. “If we want to get where we really want to be, then we’ve just got to do the extra.”
Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if they intercepted a pass or two or, at the very least, covered a receiver.