Oct 14, 2022 4 min read

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – No one will ever confuse West Virginia football coach Neal Brown with Samuel Clemens, who is far better known by his pen name of Mark Twain.

It was Clemens, aka Twain, who once said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Neal Brown feels the same way.

After being pummeled by Texas last time out, there was criticism about the West Virginia football team and questions about Brown’s future as its coach circulating, leading Brown to note that such talk was premature.

But that was after a loss, so people looked at it as more reflex than anything else.

However, after his team pulled out an amazing 43-40 victory over Baylor, he returned to that same pulpit.

“The demise is ahead of itself,” he said, adding an interesting point of view upon his season to date.

“We’ve won three of four,” he said.

And they have … and other than the Texas game, you can say that the losses to Pitt and Kansas were more a matter of bad luck than bad play.

“We had chances in those other two games and lost, but there were some really weird things happening. I’ve been in this game a long time, and some things happened I never experienced before,” Brown said.

You can curse your luck when that happens, or you can believe in yourself, in your team, in the things you believe in.

Brown believed that in this game – a game that led the nation in weird and unusual happenings.

“The ball has not bounced our way very much this year,” Brown said. “It’s going to even out over time if you do things right, treat people the right way, work hard. Good things will happen.

“I believe we are a good football team. I’ve been selling that to our kids. Maybe it’s cheesy, but I can’t help but believe that.”

Think about it for a moment. Think of that pass to Bryce Ford-Wheaton early this year that slid through his hands and was returned for a touchdown. Think about the fumbles that bounced away from Mountaineers. Think of tipped passes that could have been intercepted that fell harmlessly to earth.

But all of that caught up with the Mountaineers Thursday night.

They were shorthanded. CJ Donaldson, their star freshman running back, was out with a concussion.

So the real Tony Mathis showed up and ran for 163 yards and two touchdowns.

Defensive tackle Sean Martin knocked the football out of quarterback Blake Shapen’s hands as he scrambled.

This one went right where Jasir Cox could scoop it up and run 65 yards for a touchdown.

“That,” Brown allowed, “was the play of the game.”

“It was just our time,” Cox said. “The ball bounced our way this week.”

WVU was down 17-7 and the karma was turning against it until Cox went off on his journey.

Later, after Baylor scored to go ahead 37-31, They lined up to kick an extra point.

Automatic, right?

Not this time. Dante Stills broke through and blocked in and Jacolby Spells scooped it up and went 87 yards to put two points on WVU’s side.

“You can tell a lot about your team from your field goal block team,” Brown said, noting that extra points are usually automatic and your team is usually down because the opponents had just scored.

But they put forth the effort to block it, no less by an All-American with nothing to prove, and the game changed.

Things were evening out. True, injuries crushed the Mountaineer defense to the point they could not defend the pass.

But fate intervened and Baylor’s quarterback Blake Shapen, who was killing the Mountaineers, was injured and didn’t return. True, it came on a WVU foul of targeting that caused the injury, but it wasn’t intentional.

The QB was gone and the All-American tackle, Siaki Ika, left with an injury, too.

All of a sudden, there’s sun shining at midnight for the Mountaineers.