MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – And now it’s on to Maryland.
The West Virginia University football team concluded preseason training camp on Tuesday evening inside Milan Puskar Stadium in front of about 1,000 students, mostly made up of the Mountaineer Maniacs.
Students were provided meals and also had an opportunity to win some cool raffles before the practice. A handful were picked to run a relay race with a couple of Mountaineer players and three were selected for a punt, pass and kick contest during one of the player breaks.
“Emily from Chicago” won the passing portion with about a 25-yard throw, while “Sean from Plymouth, Massachusetts” was the punt winner and “Max from California” won the kicking competition.
The team did some scrimmage work without tackling and the practice lasted about two hours.
“We had a really good turnout,” coach Neal Brown said afterward. “I thought our marketing and game management people did a really nice job getting them here – a lot of freshmen and the support of the Mountaineer Maniacs, they do a great job whether it’s football or men’s basketball.
“There was a big group at the women’s soccer game I went to on Sunday. I’m very appreciative of them, not only what they do for our program but all of the athletic programs,” he said.
During the scrimmage portion of practice, the No. 1 offense was pitted against the No. 2 defense and the No. 2 offense went against the No. 1 defense.
Quarterback Jarret Doege directed an opening drive that ended in the end zone when he flipped a short pass to wide receiver Sean Ryan for a touchdown. Later, running back Leddie Brown made a nice catch on a pass down the near sideline for about a 25-yard gainer, and Doege also hooked up a couple of times with junior wide receiver Sam James.
During skeleton work, redshirt freshman Sam Brown leaped over a couple of defenders to make a pretty touchdown grab of about 35 yards, while backups Garrett Greene and Reese Smith connected on a couple of nice pass plays with the twos.
In between, West Virginia practiced getting special teams units on and off the field following possession changes.
“We operated in the stadium today like it was a game,” Brown explained. “We didn’t really run plays that we’re necessarily going to run against Maryland, but we tried to simulate an offense being out there and then the punt team going out, or the defense being out there and the punt return team going out. We need some work because it was a little sloppy at times.”
Brown said some of the position battles going on during fall camp will be discussed at length today as the team now turns its full attention to the Maryland Terrapins.
“I think that’s what we are going to spend (Wednesday) doing. We have officially started our Maryland prep and a part of that is we’ve got to figure out who is going to play? That will be determined on how fall camp went,” he noted. “We’ve got to determine who we want to redshirt and when do we want to use their four games, early or late? That’s what (Wednesday) is for as far as staff and player meetings.”
Based on what he’s seen so far this fall, Brown believes he’s got the makings of a good football team this year, but he’s not totally certain.
College football is one of the few sports that doesn’t have an exhibition or preseason game, so the unknowns will remain unknown until the conclusion of the season opener.
“I was telling somebody earlier today I’m not sure if we practiced another month we would be ready for everything that could potentially happen. I like our team. We’ve got to continue to get better. We’ve got a lot of things to clean up,” he said.
But are there ever enough preseason practices to get in what needs to be done?
“You don’t know,” he admitted. “There are so many things to cover in this game and you try to cover every situation that you can, but there is always something new that pops up. We will try to continue to train situationally as we go through this, but we’ve covered a lot and we will continue to cover a lot in the next 10 or 12 days.
“I don’t know of any coach who has ever said they were pleased with where they are at,” Brown concluded.
Brown’s next media opportunity will be next Monday when the weekly Big 12 coaches’ teleconferences begin. His weekly news conference with local media will return in the team room of the Milan Puskar Center on Tuesdays at noon.
Doege is scheduled to be a guest on Big 12 Sirius Radio with host Dusty Dvoracek on Thursday afternoon at 1:45 ET. Doege wrapped up his best preseason camp work at WVU since transferring from Bowling Green in the summer of 2019.
Tickets for West Virginia’s six-game home schedule, including a limited number of returned Virginia Tech tickets, remain on sale through the Mountaineer Ticket Office and can be purchased by calling toll-free 1-800-WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
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