West Virginia suffers most embarrassing loss of Neal Brown tenure in 52-15 Texas Tech beating
By Joseph Smith
The rumors have been flying around Morgantown all week that Neal Brown's tenure was coming to a close following the regular season finale against Texas Tech, regardless of the result.
If that wasn't true, the atrocious performance by the Mountaineers on Saturday likely changed that. If it was true, the coaching staff and players looked like they may have known things were already over too. Because WVU looked as if they had given up before the first whistle of the game had blown in Lubbock.
It was a classic "Brown ball" performance that WVU has become accustomed to in recent years, magnified in every way. Despite winning the time of possession by nearly 10 minutes, the Mountaineers were outgained 569-423, lost the turnover battle 3-1, and allowed Texas Tech to score 29 unanswered points in the second quarter to turn a tight 6-3 battle into a 35-3 lead for the Red Raiders at halftime. After that first quarter, the team never had a shot at the win. The final score? An ugly 52-15 loss.
The Mountaineers were outdone in effort, general strategy, and play-calling by peer and Texas Tech head coach Joey Maguire and his staff. And while the talent is evident on this WVU roster -- players like Wyatt Milum, Jahiem White, and CJ Donaldson should provide a near impossible to stop rushing attack, for example -- it almost seemed as if the Mountaineers were playing an NFL team with how blatantly they were outmatched at nearly every turn.
"We just did not compete," Brown said after the game.
The loss stands alongside the 2019 Oklahoma loss (52-14), 2022 Texas Tech loss (48-10), and 2023 Oklahoma loss (59-20) as one of the four worst margins of defeat for Brown as the WVU head coach, and the second 4+ touchdown loss for the Mountaineers this season.
After the loss, Brown is 37-35 overall with six full seasons under his belt -- still the worst winning percentage as a coach for WVU since Frank Cignetti Sr. in the 1970s. Last week Brown touted the team had a shot at back-to-back 6-win seasons in Big 12 play for the first time since joining the league -- that small saving grace was squashed into the turf at Jones AT&T Stadium alongside the last hopes that Brown's job can be saved.
The verdict is in: given the circumstances of the season and the appalling nature of this defeat, the might be the worse loss for Brown yet. It also will likely be the last. The climb appears to be over, and if the rumors of Brown's demise were greatly exaggerated before, it just grew a lot more likely they shall come to pass.