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00:00 - Thank y'all for being here.
00:01 Great win.
00:02 I appreciate the fans for showing up.
00:06 I thought the sun was going to be out,
00:07 it was going to be warm,
00:08 and then the stadium was clouded over
00:09 about three minutes in,
00:10 so I appreciate them toughening it out.
00:13 On a day that we honored the all-time winningest coach,
00:17 the most successful coach,
00:19 and one of the best men
00:22 that's been in the game of college football,
00:26 and I think only fitting.
00:28 You know, his first game as the head coach
00:30 here at West Virginia was against Cincinnati.
00:32 He gets immortalized in the stadium
00:35 in a game that we won convincingly versus Cincinnati.
00:40 And so, had a little extra pressure on us
00:42 to come out and win tonight,
00:43 or win today with him getting honored,
00:46 but glad we could get it done.
00:49 And I'm glad our crowd gave him a long ovation there.
00:53 The event last night, a ton of former players
00:56 and people connected to the program during his tenure
00:58 were there, and I'm just glad he got to enjoy that.
01:01 And what a well-deserved, well-earned honor,
01:04 and just happy for him and his family.
01:06 And a lot of great grandkids and grandkids there,
01:11 and really, most of his family was here to enjoy that.
01:13 So, I wanted to start with that,
01:15 and the next group is really happy
01:18 for the guys that walked today.
01:19 You know, you look at those guys,
01:21 and there's a core group there
01:24 that really has established the standard
01:27 of how we work here.
01:28 And guys are gonna be sorely missed
01:30 when this is all done this year,
01:32 but glad that they came out and performed.
01:36 That's a really hard, emotional deal.
01:37 And I don't know if, if you haven't done it,
01:40 you go, this is a physical game
01:41 that there's only one way to play it,
01:44 and you have to walk on the field,
01:46 and you see your family members there,
01:48 and immediately your mind goes
01:50 to all the years you've been playing football.
01:52 And then how fast this whole college deal went.
01:54 And then about two minutes after that,
01:56 you gotta go, you know, so you got all this emotions
01:59 that are flowing through,
02:00 and then you gotta go out and play a regular game.
02:02 And those guys not only did that,
02:04 but they played at a really high level.
02:06 And so, excited for them.
02:08 And we finished really strong here at home.
02:10 Last two home games were resounding wins.
02:12 Five and one at home.
02:14 You know, we'd love to have the one.
02:15 We let get away there in the fourth quarter,
02:17 but it's a tough place to play,
02:18 and I thought we did a nice job
02:21 playing some really good football here at home
02:23 for the home fans.
02:24 I'll start with offense.
02:26 Really just a dominant performance.
02:28 We, I think we punted one time,
02:32 and you know, stats speak for themselves.
02:35 Ran for 424 yards, threw for another 200.
02:38 You know, over two 100-yard rushers,
02:42 and you know, I thought it was dominant.
02:44 And it starts up front with our offensive line.
02:46 You know, the Joe Moore Award,
02:47 which goes to top offensive line,
02:49 came out with their semifinalist.
02:50 And I thought it was an absolute, complete farce
02:54 that our guys weren't involved in that.
02:56 I don't know what the criteria is for that,
02:59 but coming in the game, we were seventh in the country.
03:01 We'll be in the, we should be probably
03:03 in the top five after this game.
03:04 We ran for 424.
03:08 We were seventh in the country, and few of sacks allowed.
03:10 So, you look at those stats,
03:12 and I would make a hard argument
03:14 we're the best offensive line in the country,
03:16 but we definitely should be a semifinalist for that.
03:19 And I hope when they get the finalist out,
03:22 they'll reconsider that and actually watch some film.
03:24 Because, and that was something
03:28 that our guys took offense to today.
03:30 They took it out on Cincinnati.
03:31 It's something that I thought was a slap in the face
03:33 to our program.
03:34 And again, I hope they look at our body of work,
03:39 and we can be recognized as a finalist down the road.
03:41 Garrett bounced back.
03:42 He's the ultimate competitor,
03:44 and knew he would play well
03:45 after not playing as well last week.
03:46 I thought he was really, really good today.
03:50 And Jaheim White, you keep seeing him.
03:52 He's been getting better, he's getting better.
03:54 Him continuing to learn how to practice
03:59 is really paying off.
04:00 He was elite today, and the catch,
04:04 he had almost 300 yards of total offense.
04:08 And then, I thought our receivers
04:10 blocked really well downfield.
04:11 Mason plays, Cole Mason plays in the past game.
04:14 But they, man, they really blocked.
04:15 And I think that's a real credit to Blau Marshall,
04:17 the receiver coach.
04:18 These guys are playing hard.
04:20 And we're running a little bit different style of offense,
04:23 but those guys are really playing hard.
04:24 And those explosive runs are really,
04:28 they're right at the key, at the point of attack.
04:30 So proud of them.
04:31 Special teams were really solid.
04:33 Didn't do anything that was necessarily changing the game,
04:36 but we didn't hurt ourselves.
04:37 And we felt like if we could just be solid in that phase,
04:40 that that would pay off, and we did.
04:43 I thought our special, or Michael Hayes did a great job
04:45 kick off tonight.
04:46 You know, when you don't cover kicks,
04:48 it kind of goes unnoticed,
04:49 but those are big opportunities.
04:51 And him getting the ball in the end zone
04:53 and putting some air on the ball
04:55 where they have to fair catch it, that's big.
04:57 And then defense, really proud of our staff
04:59 and our players.
05:01 Did not play anywhere close to our best a week ago.
05:04 And for us to come out,
05:05 and really for three quarters, dominate the game,
05:07 I think that speaks to them.
05:09 The fourth quarter, the stats got skewed.
05:10 I wasn't real pleased with how we finished
05:12 on that side of the ball.
05:14 But I thought for three quarters, man,
05:16 our defensive line was dominant.
05:18 They played really well.
05:19 We really pushed this game all week to our guys.
05:21 It was going to be a match-ups of fronts, right?
05:25 And, you know, our O-line versus their D-line,
05:27 their O-line versus our D-line, you know,
05:29 and both teams were one,
05:31 I think they were fifth in the country in rushing.
05:32 We were seventh.
05:34 And just felt like the game would be one up front.
05:36 And I thought that we won it overwhelmingly on both fronts.
05:39 And so, you know, really good game
05:42 as far as on the defense side as well.
05:44 So with that, Kevin, you start us off.
05:47 - In setting up your running game,
05:49 because you have so many different options right now,
05:52 are you running some different things
05:53 first couple of series just to see how they're working?
05:56 And then, or when you have as much success as you did,
05:59 you know, in the first couple of series,
06:00 obviously moving it, you say,
06:01 "Okay, we're going to stick with this,"
06:03 or still tempting to look at other parts of it?
06:05 - Yeah, so what we did,
06:06 we were just trying to change the picture on a little bit.
06:09 Schematically, we really reduced
06:10 the number of schemes we ran today.
06:12 We only really ran about three run schemes today.
06:15 But what we did is we tried to motion
06:18 different looks for the tight end,
06:20 move the back around a little bit,
06:22 and where we were trying to get the ball to hit,
06:24 you know, into the boundary, into the field.
06:26 And so that was really the plan.
06:29 You know, we started off good,
06:31 and then we had a penalty
06:32 that kind of knocked us off that first drive,
06:34 and then we rolled the rest of the half.
06:37 And, you know, I think that, you know,
06:39 at the point of attack, you know, Wyatt Milam,
06:41 you know, he's special.
06:43 You know, he's special,
06:45 and he was really good at the point of attack.
06:48 You know, I thought that Zach Frazier
06:50 really took the match up with Corleone personal.
06:52 You know, I don't know how that went,
06:55 but stats-wise, I'd say it went pretty well for us.
06:57 We'll see when we watch video.
06:59 And I thought that Tomas and Jaquay and Nick Malone,
07:04 you know, those guys played at a high level today.
07:06 And then the tight ends.
07:07 Anytime you can run the ball with that much,
07:09 you know, and we're doing it
07:10 where those guys are at the point a lot.
07:12 You know, Cole and Traylon Davis
07:14 probably played one of his best games
07:16 as a mountaineer today, too.
07:18 And so, schematically, you know, pretty simple,
07:21 but tried to change the picture on those guys.
07:25 From your perspective, kind of take me
07:27 through the emotion on the sideline,
07:29 walk coach Nealon's being immortalized.
07:31 Do you think that gave your team a boost?
07:33 I, you know, I think we'd be naive
07:35 to think our players really saw that.
07:38 They didn't. You know, they're kind of worried
07:39 about what they got going on.
07:41 Now, I took a time.
07:42 I kind of, the defense was out on the field at the time,
07:44 so I kind of stepped away and was able to watch it.
07:46 And like I said, just really happy for him.
07:49 I don't know if it gave us a boost or anything like that.
07:52 Now, our players did understand the magnitude
07:54 of he was getting honored,
07:55 and we did a good job on Friday in our team meeting,
07:59 kind of educating him about him
08:01 and what he was able to accomplish here.
08:03 And you got to remember now, coach is around, too,
08:05 and he's in front of them a few times each year.
08:09 And so they know who he is.
08:10 They know, you know, his son Danny's our equipment manager.
08:13 And so, you know, they knew that this was a game
08:17 that not only did we need to win to get to seven
08:19 and get to five in conference,
08:20 but on a day that we're recognizing coach Nealon,
08:24 we needed to play our best.
08:26 What do you -- going back to both Jaheim and Garrett,
08:30 was there anything specific --
08:31 because Garrett seemed to be, like,
08:33 hitting people in stride,
08:35 and, I mean, his passes were so crisp, and yet his runs.
08:38 So each of those players,
08:40 is there something that impressed you a lot?
08:41 Well, I thought Garrett bounced back.
08:44 You know, that was really the --
08:46 last week was first time he really hadn't had success
08:48 this year, you know, and there's been varying levels of success,
08:51 but he really just didn't play well.
08:54 And he's the ultimate competitor.
08:56 You know, there's a lot of skills that he has
08:58 as far as being able to throw the ball and run
09:00 and all those kind of things,
09:01 but the best trait that he has is his competitiveness.
09:05 And that ate at him last week, you know,
09:09 and he didn't feel like he gave us an opportunity
09:13 because he wasn't at his best, and he took that personal,
09:16 and he came back and performed.
09:19 And he was on from the very beginning.
09:21 You know, he threw some really, really good deep balls,
09:24 and he had some pressure, especially early in the game,
09:26 and I thought he stepped up and did that.
09:28 He did a much better job on scramble plays,
09:31 of getting out and running and hitting guys in stride,
09:35 looking to be a passer.
09:36 And then Jaheim, I thought he broke tackles.
09:38 You know, I don't know how many yards after contact he had,
09:41 but it was a bunch.
09:43 And that was a really difficult catch he had on the touchdown.
09:45 And I thought that really -- it was 7-0 to the time.
09:48 That made it 14-0, and that really put us in a position
09:51 where we could kind of get out in front of him.
09:54 You know, the running stuff with Garrett,
09:55 how much of it is Colin, how much of it is Reed
09:57 and him seeing something and doing the right thing?
09:59 So, a lot of the big runs today were called runs,
10:06 where he's reading, Mike.
10:09 Now, he had some scrambles where he ran the ball,
10:12 but most of his big chunk plays --
10:14 and I'm going back in my memory as I'm talking,
10:17 so most of his big chunk plays were Reed plays,
10:21 not necessarily called quarterback runs,
10:23 but where he's reading a defender.
10:26 And then he had a couple -- you know,
10:27 a couple of them are pass plays, you know,
10:30 where he ran around some.
10:32 Your final drive of the first half,
10:34 they get a touchdown, and you have a small amount of time.
10:37 Talk to him, I guess, just what to do there.
10:39 And it was a challenge, like, it's good to have him back here.
10:41 Yeah, so it's 21-7,
10:43 and it's kind of going on the radar, which is okay,
10:47 is, you know, we've been really good
10:48 in two-minute situations all year.
10:51 And so what I told him, it was 21-7, I said,
10:53 "Hey, listen, we're going to be aggressive,
10:55 but I want to be smart."
10:57 And I told him the same thing on that third down play
10:58 through the interception, so it's kind of like my kids.
11:01 Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.
11:03 But I told him, "Let's be smart here."
11:07 And so we like to match up with Cole into the boundary.
11:11 You know, on the safety, there's big --
11:13 you know, and so he was able to hit.
11:15 We had a big quarterback draw play,
11:17 and then Cole made a couple catches,
11:20 and then he just read the backside and was able to get in.
11:23 I would have liked to have eaten up a little bit more time,
11:25 so they didn't have a chance, but he did a nice job.
11:29 That drive was mostly him.
11:30 He threw two really good passes to Cole,
11:32 and he had some really positive runs.
11:36 Obviously, Jaheim had a great game on the ground,
11:39 but also the big touchdown catch.
11:41 Was there something maybe about this matchup
11:43 that allowed to unleash him a little bit more as a receiver,
11:45 too, or was it just progression of him as a player?
11:48 Because you did talk about the last couple weeks
11:50 about wanting to use him in that way, and then here we go.
11:53 Yeah, so the touchdown was off a look
11:56 that we've been handing the ball off to Rodney on,
11:59 and so Rodney was a decoy,
12:01 and we were able to slip Jaheim right there
12:03 and on a corner route, so Jaheim usually blocks on that play,
12:06 and we just slipped the block.
12:07 He went inside and ran a corner and made a difficult catch.
12:10 Garrett made a great play because we didn't block
12:12 the protection right.
12:13 We left their nickel free.
12:15 He blitzed, and he was free,
12:17 and Garrett did a nice job stepping up
12:19 and throwing a catchable ball,
12:20 but it was still a difficult catch for Jaheim,
12:23 and so really thought he'd have a couple more catches
12:27 in the game, but just the way it played out,
12:28 we didn't really need to, but he's good.
12:33 Am I surprised he went for 200?
12:35 Maybe, but he's been playing really well.
12:39 We've got a real solid one-two punch.
12:41 I thought CJ came in and gave us some things.
12:43 I thought Justin Johnson really hit some nice runs as well.
12:49 - So CJ, if the game was probably closer,
12:52 he could have probably played more.
12:54 Now he was very limited.
12:55 He practiced a little bit on Thursday,
12:57 a little bit on Friday,
12:59 and he may have got two runs on Wednesday,
13:01 so he was very limited,
13:02 and so we let him make the call in pregame.
13:07 He ran around pretty good in pregame.
13:09 He felt he could go.
13:11 There was one way he felt better than the other,
13:13 so we tried to call those,
13:14 and so I'm hoping after a couple days, by Tuesday,
13:18 he can get out and be closer to full speed,
13:21 and then Doug was our emergency.
13:22 We dressed him today.
13:23 He went in for the victory snap
13:25 'cause he wanted to participate,
13:27 but he wasn't ready,
13:30 and so I'm hoping, didn't do a whole lot all week.
13:34 We get a couple days, and I'm hoping by Wednesday,
13:37 he can be back and then be available for Baylor.
13:40 - More of the focus on quarterbacks and decision-making,
13:43 like you talked about last week,
13:45 and this is on the passing game,
13:46 but in the run game that you mentioned a little bit,
13:49 his level of decision-making on those plays today,
13:52 as good as it's been?
13:54 - Yeah, kind of who we are.
13:56 I don't know how many times we snapped it today.
13:58 Wasn't as many as we normally do,
13:59 but so let's say 65.
14:02 Kevin, there's probably, and I'm ballparking here,
14:05 but 50 of those 65 are probably,
14:08 he's having to make some kind of decision.
14:09 Either he's reading somebody in the run game,
14:12 he's making a decision whether he's going to throw
14:14 an RPO or a screen,
14:16 or it's a pass play,
14:19 where he has a pre-snap and a post-snap.
14:21 So we're asking him to make a lot of decisions,
14:25 and we're putting a lot on his plate.
14:27 And I think he's at a point in his career
14:29 where the best way for us to be successful
14:32 is to put a lot on his plate.
14:34 Now, when you do that, and he doesn't see it as clearly,
14:37 like last week, you're going to struggle some.
14:40 But that's really, I thought that was going to be a one-off,
14:44 and he came out ready to go today,
14:45 and I'm proud of how he competed.
14:47 - Jermaine, 9.7 yards per carry today.
14:51 Can you just kind of speak to his explosiveness
14:53 and ability to re-blast?
14:54 - Yeah, well, he's decisive.
14:57 Sometimes when, you know, if you don't know, that's okay.
15:01 So there's no indecision there.
15:02 You know, he's taking it, he's hitting it.
15:05 Even if he's wrong, it's full speed,
15:06 and he's getting downhill fast.
15:08 And he does a little better when we put him in the pistol,
15:11 and I thought it gives him some momentum.
15:15 He's more quick than fast.
15:16 I think after another offseason,
15:18 you know, I think his top-end speed will increase.
15:21 But he does a really good job of -- he reads blocks.
15:24 He's a one-cut guy, and he's, you know, he's small in stature,
15:28 but he's a really thick, lower-body guy.
15:30 And he can break tackles, and he did that today.
15:33 - You called it 70 yards over there, rushing average.
15:37 Why was that in the second half?
15:39 - Well, you know, that's going to be the key for them.
15:42 You know, they've been a team
15:45 that's really ran the ball successfully all year.
15:48 I don't know where they were after three quarters of that,
15:52 but I would say it was considerably less.
15:56 And then to hold the Kiner guy to 56 yards,
15:59 I mean, he's really good.
16:01 I was concerned about him and our ability to tackle him
16:04 because he's a guy that has a super-strong lower body.
16:09 And so for us to be able to do that
16:10 and hold him to 56 yards, for us to win,
16:13 we knew we were going to have to control the run game.
16:14 We didn't necessarily think we were going to stop it,
16:16 but we had to control it, and I thought our guys did that.
16:19 - So West Virginia had control most of this whole game,
16:22 but they did kind of put up a little bit of a fight
16:25 there towards the end.
16:26 Did you or any of the coaches say anything to the team of,
16:28 "Hey, like, you know, we're still up big.
16:30 Settle down," just because they're at the gate this year
16:32 where teams have come back and made it a little closer?
16:34 - Yeah, no, they made it closer.
16:36 You know, I think it was 42 to 14,
16:38 so they were going to have to --
16:39 At one point, it might have been 42 to 7.
16:43 No, they did a little bit more in the fourth quarter
16:45 than I would have liked,
16:46 but I don't think that game ever got,
16:48 you know, where it was in question.
16:50 But, you know, bottom line, we had them at third and 16,
16:53 and we missed two tackles, and they ran down,
16:55 and then they hit a trick play, too,
16:57 and so not necessarily pleased
16:59 with how we finished in the fourth quarter,
17:01 but we'll take 42-21 in a conference game.
17:04 - You know, I'm hoping it wasn't first quarter.
17:06 They had a couple of fourth downs
17:08 where we had field punted both times,
17:10 and I think you turned both into touchdowns, 12-21.
17:13 How big was, you know, stuff like that?
17:15 - Yeah, you know, I think those are decisions that,
17:19 you know, sometimes, you know,
17:21 I haven't gotten them all right either,
17:23 and Sat, he's been doing this for a long time,
17:26 and he's been aggressive, you know,
17:31 but their fourth-down stats
17:32 haven't been very good this year, too,
17:34 so I think that probably played into it.
17:37 He's usually a pretty aggressive guy,
17:38 just playing him when he was at App and I was at Troy,
17:42 but coming into this game,
17:44 their fourth-down stats weren't good,
17:45 so I'm sure that played into it,
17:47 and then one of them was a fourth and really long two,
17:50 and those are hard calls, I can tell you.
17:51 Like, we had one last week.
17:52 I felt like we needed to go for it
17:55 to give us a chance to win,
17:56 but those are ones you're like, "Eh," you know,
17:59 and so, and we've been pretty good on fourth down.
18:03 Our fourth-down defense has been pretty good, too,
18:05 so that might have played into it,
18:07 and I thought we had a critical one there.
18:10 Probably as odd a first-touchdown drive
18:12 as maybe I've had in my career.
18:14 We had, so we lost a tight end during that drive,
18:19 so we didn't have 12 personnel.
18:21 The sixth offensive line,
18:23 we had an offensive lineman get hurt within that drive,
18:26 and we lost a running back,
18:29 and so the 21 personnel sets that we used,
18:32 that we would use,
18:33 the 12 personnel sets we would use,
18:36 were both out,
18:37 and then our sixth offensive lineman personnel grouping,
18:41 so I had to use two timeouts there
18:43 because I called, so I called a play,
18:46 and I'm like, as soon as I called it,
18:48 I'm like, "Oh, he's out.
18:49 "We can't run that,"
18:50 and so, but we finally got settled down
18:53 after that timeout before the fourth and one call,
18:55 and then Garrett did a really nice job,
18:59 and we got a good push on that fourth and one,
19:01 and that ended up being a huge play
19:03 that probably everybody forgets.
19:04 - You know, the way you trimmed down the passing
19:07 for Garrett this week,
19:08 do you think that helped him see it next level better?
19:10 - Well, I hope so.
19:11 I hope so.
19:12 You know, we're kind of in this deal
19:13 where we're either gonna take shots,
19:15 or, you know, we're not dinking and dunking much,
19:20 you know, so he saw it.
19:24 He threw the ball well.
19:25 You know, we really worked on his fundamentals
19:27 during the week,
19:28 but at the same time,
19:29 I didn't want him thinking out here.
19:30 You know, you work on fundamentals during the week,
19:31 you go play.
19:32 You trust your training on Saturday,
19:34 and I did.
19:36 I thought he was really accurate.
19:37 I mean, from the first play,
19:38 we called a shot play there
19:39 the very first play of the game,
19:40 hit Traylon Ray in stride,
19:42 and I thought that kind of set the tone
19:43 for the rest of the afternoon for him.
19:45 - Neil, you talked a little bit earlier
19:46 about reaching seven wins and five in conference.
19:49 That's your winningest season here,
19:50 and what does it mean to you to reach that higher level
19:53 and to do it in a season
19:54 where you were picked 14th in the league?
19:56 - Yeah, I don't know.
19:57 I think the seven wins is good.
19:59 You know, we need to get to eight and then get to nine.
20:01 I think if we can get to nine wins, that's significant.
20:04 You know, if you look at what's been done here
20:06 since joining the Big 12,
20:08 I think that would put us up,
20:10 what, maybe second since joining the Big 12.
20:13 I think the six conference wins is significant.
20:16 If you look at it,
20:18 there's a couple teams that have won seven,
20:19 and then a couple that have won six,
20:21 and that's going way back
20:24 as far as teams that have won six conference football games.
20:28 There's very few in the history of our program
20:31 that have won six.
20:31 So those are some of our goals, you know,
20:33 to get to six conference wins,
20:35 to get to eight, to give us a chance to get to nine.
20:38 We got to go to Waco.
20:39 That's a tough trip,
20:40 and I don't know how they did today,
20:42 but we got to go and kind of,
20:45 guys will have a good time today
20:46 and kind of get them back tomorrow
20:48 and then start practice on Monday.
20:50 And this is, if you're a football coach,
20:52 this is one of your favorite weeks of the year,
20:54 you know, practicing and playing during Thanksgiving week.
20:56 So guys, I appreciate it.
20:59 Y'all have a good weekend.