Nov 14, 2023 By Bob Hertzel 7 min read

MORGANTOWN — In the rubble of every disaster there emerge heroes, and so it is that our quest today after a disaster of a weekend that saw West Virginia’s football team annihilated by Oklahoma, 59-20, and the basketball team embarrassed by mid-major Monmouth, 73-65, on its Coliseum home floor.

Believe it or not, we found some heroes, not the kind you normally picture in a sports setting for, to be honest, there was nothing heroic about either team’s in-game performance.

But in the post-game there were heroic performances by those participants willing to step forward and be spokesmen for their teams.

No one doubts that Garrett Greene probably would have rather gone on facing the menacing Oklahoma defense all night as it confounded him with its combination of pass rushes and secondary coverage than face the blitz of media questions as part of his post-game routine.

Same goes for his coach, Neal Brown, who genuinely thought he had prepared his team for a strong performance, maybe even one to launch it back onto the national scene, but who instead prepared them only to return to midday on ESPN+ next weekend when they play the final home game of the season against Cincinnati.

A day earlier it was glib newcomer Quinn Slazinski who took the microphone to be spokesman for his teammates following the Monmouth debacle and then Josh Eilert came out to meet the media in a far different circumstance than after a victory Gatorade bath when he won his debut.

Speaking after defeats is a hard thing to do, be it sports or politics. And to do it well is perhaps the most underappreciated thing an athlete or coach can do.

I know. I’ve been there, the one shooting the questions that really have no answers to athletes. Be it asking Pat Darcy how he gave up Carlton Fisk’s midnight home run in Game 6 of the 1976 World Series or Tom Niedenfuer after he did the same thing in giving up a game-winning home to Jack Clark in Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS after Dodgers’ manager Tom Lasorda opted not to walk the St. Louis slugger with a base open in the ninth to face Andy Van Slyke.

Asking the questions can be tough, answering them nothing short of having a tooth pulled without Novocain.

There were times back in my early days when I’d fill in covering Woody Hayes at Ohio State that he would make the media wait upwards of an hour before gracing their presence. While Bob Huggins was always willing to face the music, sometimes his post-game meetings with his team stressed deadlines.

I’ve been there when in a post-game Q&A session such managers as Jim Leyland and Earl Weaver went off on legendary obscenity-filled tirades in response to questions; even seeing a sportswriter exit Weaver’s office with blood flowing down his face when a phone Weaver had tossed accidentally struck him.

It can be adversarial and demeaning, but when you have athletes or coaches who treat it on a high level, everyone benefits from the athlete himself, the reporter and the public, who gets to read a story centered upon the play or game in question rather than what can turn into another Thriller in Manila.

Brown has been one to own up to whatever shortcomings show through on the field. It isn’t easy to say “I screwed up” and now it will be in headlines the next day, yet Brown not only admits to his failures but seems to always let the competitor in him promise better.

“We didn’t coach good enough or execute good enough and that didn’t resemble anything that the 2023 Mountaineers have been,” Brown said. “To say that I’m disappointed would be an understatement at the least. Quite frankly, I’m (ticked) and I’m embarrassed about what we put on tape tonight.”

But, Brown would add “I can promise you we’ll finish a hell of a lot better than we looked tonight, because that hasn’t been the team that we’ve been coaching all year.”

He’s been around, though, and you’d expect him to know how to deal with the media and public, but it is a different story with a player like Garrett Greene, so energetic, so into what he does and far more comfortable behind center than behind a microphone.

Yet there he was after completing only 10 of 27 passes, after being bottled up as a runner and after playing what had to be the worst game of his career.

He didn’t have to be there, but somehow you felt you couldn’t keep him away.

“It all goes back to me doing what I’m coached to do,” Greene said. “They harp on me all the time that the reads are the reads and I have to do a better job with that.”

He admitted that the Sooners threw him off in his ability to make the necessary reads, leading to a number of mistakes.

“They gave us some complicated looks,” Greene explained. “That’s what their defense is, giving you a lot to look at and I started to see too much.”

Just what did Greene mean by that?

“There’s so many moving parts of it between the front and secondary that if you look at the whole picture it looks like there’s bodies everywhere,” he said. “I started settling in and seeing it better after the first quarter and half, but I still didn’t see it good tonight.”

On the basketball side, Slazinski did his best to analyze what had happened to the Mountaineers against Monmouth.

“I kind of look at it as playing up to your ability,” he said. “You miss shots in basketball, but there’s some stuff that’s just inexcusable. We have to be the first ones to the court and on the floor. If we aren’t the media should kill us for it. We deserve that.”

Think what he just said and if you ever heard any athlete be so open and understanding about the relationship. Slazinski was ready to take the bullets that might fly at him and his teammates.

“We are here to play at a high level. We did not show that tonight,” he continued. “A 50/50 ball, in a West Virginia jersey, growing up as a kid, I’m like West Virginia hasn’t lost one 50/50 ball. We have to have some of that emotion and fight and understand this is bigger than one individual.”

Eilert, like his player, wore his heart on his sleeve.

“I don’t want to make excuses,” he said. “We have a short bench and we’re trying to manage that as best we can and try to figure out how to win with all these challenges. Certainly, this team has faced a lot of adversity and challenges thus far.

“This is one that we’re going to try and dissect and figure out and try to learn and move on from this. That’s all you can do after a loss. You know, I told the guys, I’m just as guilty as everyone else. I have to learn what I can do better. What can I do better for them?

“We had a heart to heart and everybody spoke their piece. That’s healthy. There will be a lot of voices and critics and people can voice their opinion and try to break us, but we have to stay together.”