MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia head coach Neal Brown made it known in July he didn’t agree with the Mountaineers being chosen to finish last in the new-look 14-team Big 12 Conference when the league released its annual preseason poll.
While much may not be expected of the Mountaineers in 2023 from a national perspective, West Virginia opened fall camp Wednesday exactly one month before its season opener at Penn State.
Brown described his team as having “a youthful energy about it” before offering more on the Mountaineers and their motivation.
“They’re a group that’s really hungry and has a chip on their shoulder,” Brown said. “They’re fun to coach, but it’s too early.”
Just how early?
Brown has yet to see his team go through a padded practice.
“It’s 75 degrees and it’s kind of all purple skies and butterflies,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes once it gets a little warmer and there’s some contact.”
Ahead of his fifth season guiding WVU, Brown stressed his team’s first two practices of fall camp are “more mental days than anything” as players grow used to practice procedures.
With spring football and then 16 organized team activities in the summer, Brown has an idea of what he wants his team’s personality to be as it strives to thrive in an underdog role.
“The personality really starts in January and carries and kind of builds through summer and during your first two weeks of camp, it’s kind of solidified,” Brown said. “When you get in the season, it’s how you handle your first big piece of adversity. This team has kind of a youthful energy about it. They’re excited and they’re a confident group.”
Defensively, Brown noted linebacker Lee Kpogba, the team leader in tackles last season, has a big impact on the unit’s personality as a whole.
“A lot of it has to do with who are your alphas on either side of the ball.” Brown said. “On defense, kind of our alpha is Lee Kpogba. He’s aggressive by nature. He likes to talk and a bad play doesn’t necessarily affect him, so if we can have his aggressive mentality defensively, that’s going to be a positive. But it has to happen and you can’t necessarily force that. He’s definitely the leader there — he and Sean [Martin] in the front. I’d like for us to move toward his mentality defensively.”
At least in part, the preseason poll only adds more fuel to the fire for the Mountaineers. However, Brown says that doesn’t weigh as heavily as last season’s 5-7 record, which marked the second time WVU failed to qualify for a bowl and its third losing season under Brown.
“The fact that really a sour taste in the whole program from a year ago where we underachieved, we had some opportunities to get bowl eligible and we didn’t do that,” Brown said. “That burned, and then maybe the lack of respect that we’re getting in the preseason contributes to it, but the biggest piece of that is last year.”
Projections and results don’t always add up, and Brown noted last month the Big 12’s preseason 10-team poll in his four years prior as WVU head coach hasn’t always yielded accurate results.
TCU was chosen No. 7 in the 2022 Big 12 Preseason Poll and played for a National Championship. The Horned Frogs fell to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game despite the Wildcats being projected to finish fifth.
One year earlier, Baylor was projected eighth in the Big 12 and defeated Oklahoma State for the conference championship.
In 2020, Iowa State finished 8-1 in Big 12 play after being projected fourth, while Baylor, which was slotted directly behind the Cyclones in the preseason, finished next-to-last.
“If you go back and look at some of the best teams here, they haven’t necessarily been picked to achieve at a high level,” Brown said. “There’s some solace in that and there’s also some in that if you go back to the last three preseason polls of where people are picked and where they finished, I said this at media day — they haven’t been very good at it.”
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Brown provided several injury updates across the Mountaineers’ roster.
Sophomore bandit Brayden Dudley is limited after having offseason surgery, though Brown said the team is “hopeful he’ll be back by early in the year if not the first game.”
True freshman linebacker Josiah Trotter, ruled out for the season in April due to a lower leg injury, is in the process of rehabilitation, as is redshirt freshman defensive lineman Asani Redwood. Redwood is ahead of schedule and has been a participant in some non-contact drills.
Wide receiver Cortez Braham was “very limited” Wednesday due to sickness and is likely to again be limited Thursday in the team’s second practice of fall camp.
Davis Mallenger, converted from safety to wide receiver, continues to work his way back from surgery that ended last season.
“He’s out there,” Brown said, “but limited and not full go yet.”