Brown, Mountaineers Enter Spring Practices With New Confidence
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MORGANTOWN -- Even Mother Nature seemed to be buying into the glow that was settling over the Puskar Center at midday Thursday as Neal Brown gathered the West Virginia football team around him to preview Monday's opening of spring football practice.
The day was bathed in sunshine with just a pair of puffy white clouds hanging overhead. If the sun didn't bring the warmth of spring with it, the chill in the air served the purpose of giving it a bit of a fitting football feel.
As Brown spoke, you felt that there was a new optimism in the air as he noted over and over how far his team had come, using phrases like:
"We've got the best leadership we've had."
"We're in a good place. I like this group. It's been fun to work with them."
"It's a close group so far."
"This is by far the most production we return and the most depth we return, without question."
These phrases aren't just coach talk. The Mountaineers feel they made big strides last season and can now see the top of that hill they've been climbing and asked people to believe in.
But because of that the approach this year has to be different.
Last football season, No. 14 was hung everywhere in the locker room and throughout the offices. It was a reminder that they'd been picked 14th and last in the Big 12. It was brought up every chance it could be brought up and it drove the Mountaineers as they tried to regain the pride they felt they had lost.
Now, how do you go from telling your team it isn't as bad as people think it is to convincing them they aren't as good as they think they are?
"For us, it's about taking the next step," Brown said. "Nine wins and a bowl, how do you get over the hump to win games so you can go play in Dallas. That's the push for us. We have to continue to get better."
Brown says he will ease into the psychological push at a later date, that spring is not for that. This is a teaching time, a learning period, a time to see young kids, a time to figure out who can do what and who can't.
"We really will get to that other stuff in the fall. Right now, I don't talk to them at all about what our expectations are or not. To me, this is about, until we get to the end of the summer, then we will start leaning into expectations and all that kind of stuff," Brown said.
"Right now, it's just about getting better. You guys are around them for interviews and stuff, but I'm around them at home and I'm around them here … teenagers. To them, long term is like next week, so we're a long way from that."
But he offered a little insight into where the push will come from when he gets to it.
"Now what I would say is it is my assumption that we're not going to be picked first or second, so we will not have these humongous expectations on us. We'll still be in a prove it mode," Brown suggested.
He won't ignore that he has to open the season with Penn State, only this time it's in Morgantown and there will be expectations that the Mountaineers win the game.
In many ways this season is similar to 1998 when Don Nehlen had really high expectations for a WVU team that had Amos Zereoue at running back, Marc Bulger at quarterback and a receiving corps of David Saunders, Shawn Foreman, Khory Ivy and Pat Greene.
They opened the season ranked 11th in the country and Nehlen believed a national championship such as the one he almost won a decade earlier wasn't out of the question.
But he opened the season against No. 1 Ohio State and was beaten, 34-17, and to this day Nehlen questions what might have been had they not opened the year with that game rather than something softer.
This year has the same feel with Penn State as the opponent.
So Brown, while he won't talk about expectations with his team yet, does plan on letting them know that Penn State is there waiting for them.
"Here's the thing. It's about urgency. We will have a countdown clock. We won't necessarily talk about what Penn State is doing, but it will be really relevant. Everybody assumes it's a long way off, but then you start putting the days down.
"That way, every day we'll have marked the number of days left in spring and the number of days until we play Penn State. We do that so they understand there's some urgency here. We're not easing into it, like, here they come."