The West Virginia Mountaineers fell to 3-3 on the season and 2-1 in conference play Saturday when they lost 28-16 to the 6-0 Iowa State Cyclones.
The upset-minded Mountaineers hung with the Cyclones for the first half, trailing just 14-10 at the break, but a scoreless third quarter gave way to Iowa State scoring a pair of touchdowns in the fourth quarter to go up 28-10 before Iowa State added a late score in a failed attempt at a comeback.
After the game, West Virginia head coach Neal Brown recognized that, while his team played poorly, the officiating didn’t help matters.
“I thought, especially in the second half, I thought we fought and competed. A couple turning points in the game. I thought the non-interception call when we threw the first pick and I thought the defensive holding call, which to me the ball was not even close. It was a give up throw. He threw it away and I don’t know. All I know is we were the least penalized team coming in in the country, yards per game, I believe… and they had one penalty, and we had seven,” Brown said in his post-game press conference.
Brown was careful to stop himself before getting fined, though, adding, “I’ll be careful what I say because we lost the game. The officials didn’t lose the game by any means. We lost the game. We had opportunities to win but it wasn’t very good.”
West Virginia will have a chance to get back on track when it hosts the Kansas State Wildcats on October 19.
