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Sep. 6—MORGANTOWN — West Virginia is in need of a pick-me-up.
Last week’s disappointing 34-12 loss to Penn State has put a damper on the beginning of the season and has some fans wavering on their belief in the Mountaineers this year.
“My message to our fans is I wouldn’t lose faith after one game, ” head coach Neal Brown said Monday. “We didn’t perform well, but we’ll bounce back and we’ll get back on track. We’ve got a good football team, we’ve just got to get out there and show it and it starts this week.”
WVU (0-1) welcomes its annual FCS opponent to town this week, which is usually the perfect time for a team put a big win up on the board and start feeling good about itself again.
The team coming to Milan Puskar Stadium today (ESPN +, 6 p.m.) isn’t your usual hapless FCS opponent, however.
The Albany Great Danes are ranked No. 16 in FCS and are coming off the best season in program history after advancing to the semifinals of the 2023 FCS Playoffs. UA finished 11-4, winning their conference championship and winning two playoff games.
“They’re a good football team, ” Brown said. “This is the best FCS program we’ve had come in here since the first game in 2019 when we played James Madison. They have our attention.”
Head coach Greg Gattuso was named the national coach of the year after last season. Gattuso, who has been at Albany for 11 seasons, is very familiar with the Mountaineers, having played on Mountaineer Field with Penn State in the early 1980s and being an assistant coach at Pitt from 2005-10.
“The thing that sticks out to me the most is they’re extremely well coached, ” Brown said of his counterpart. “It’s a team that’s used to winning, it’s a team that plays in a really good conference and these guys do a really good job schematically in all three phases.”
Like WVU, Albany did not play particularly well in…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mountaineers-look-back-track-against-023300373.html
Author : The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.
Publish date : 2024-09-07 02:33:00
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