Neal Brown explains how WVU can put itself in position to win the Big 12

For the first time since Will Grier, David Sills, Gary Jennings, David Long Jr. and Co. donned the old gold and blue, there is real hype surrounding the West Virginia football program before the season begins. The Mountaineers are coming off an impressive nine-win season, including a convincing victory over North Carolina in the Duke's Mayo Bowl.

Almost every college football analyst focuses on Utah, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Kansas, while West Virginia, which has a ton of production on all three sides of the football, doesn't get enough attention.

During a guest appearance on ESPN's “Marty & McGee,” WVU head coach Neal Brown talked about what needs to happen for the Mountaineers to be in the running for the conference crown at the end of the season.

“If you look back at our last year, we took a loss on Thursday night in a game where we didn't play particularly well. To me, that wasn't bad luck, we didn't play well enough to deserve the win. And then we lost to Oklahoma State here at home – we're up by three points and one of our punt gunners runs into one of our punt returners. They score on the next play and we ended up losing. Well, if we win any of those games, we're in the Big 12 Conference championship game last year. But we weren't ready. You win games when you're ready to win them and we weren't ready.

“We've solidified our pass coverage, which was our weakness last year. We have two top-notch cornerbacks and we're going to be better in coverage than we've ever been in the six years I've been here. And on offense, we have a chance to be one of the best offenses in the country, and that starts with Garrett Greene, who I think is electric. He's improved a lot as a passer. He's under the radar and I'm not sure why. We played with three freshmen at receiver last year and we're going to be significantly better there. Our offense is still a run-first offense. We were really explosive in the passing game, but we need to get more efficient. We need to be more efficient on third down, throwing the ball, and we need to be able to throw the ball in the red zone for touchdowns. We didn't do either of those at a high level last year. On defense, we need to stop the run and get more turnovers. If we can do that, we have a chance to win the league.”

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