(Photo by Geoff Coyle – @GFCoyle)
Morgantown, West Virginia – Neal Brown absolutely out-coached one of the very best coaches in the Big 12 Conference today. Gary Patterson, Head Coach of TCU, former Big 12 Conference Coach of the Year, two-time AP National Coach of the Year, the coach with a 175-74 career record, got taken to school by West Virginia’s Neal Brown.
Neal Brown coached his best, most complete game as the Head Coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers today. Not only did the Mountaineers easily handle the Horned Frogs, winning 24-6, West Virginia also out-gained Texas Christian 392 to 295 total yards, had 34:20 minutes of possession to TCU’s 25:40 and had no turnovers compared to two for TCU.
But it was more than the numbers in this game. Brown appeared confident in his play calls offensively and his defense was once again outstanding. This was a complete, all-around effort that could only be accomplished with tremendous coaching.
West Virginia’s ten penalties for 85 yards was the only area for concern, but many of those were poor calls by the referees. The bottom line is that West Virginia won and beat a really very well-coached football team today, and made a very good football coach look really bad.
In fact, former head coach turned analyst Urban Meyer wondered aloud at halftime what was happening with TCU. “You go back and look at their recruiting rankings, within three hours of their campus in Fort Worth, they have the best players in America, right there,” Meyer said. “Then you have West Virginia — TCU is getting out-coached right now. (West Virginia is) doing a heck of a job.”
Meyer went on to say, “Just right there on paper, TCU is doing a better job, better recruiting. What in the world is going on? You know they have a great coach in Gary Patterson, but you know something is going on. My gosh, they beat Texas earlier in the year … Is something wrong with TCU right now? They don’t look right.”
It wasn’t necessarily what TCU was or was not doing, it was Neal Brown’s preparation and the team’s execution today. West Virginia put a beat down on TCU and Neal Brown gave Gary Patterson a teaching clinic.
