This time last year, the Big 12 Conference was about to give the West Virginia football team a big boost. When the conference's 2023 preseason poll was released, voters placed West Virginia last. Last. 14th out of 14 teams.
Neil Brown's team finished in a three-way tie for fourth place, far from the preseason expectations. The Mountaineers were open about being motivated by a summer of miscalculation predictions, and they used it as a driving force — and often.
Big 12 Football Media Days is fast approaching, and coming off a nine-win season and returning much of its offensive talent and several key defensive players, West Virginia is unlikely to finish last in the expansion conference in 2024.
So what will motivate them this fall?
“We're just trying to do better than we did last year,” veteran safety Aubrey Burks recently told Gold and Blue Nation. “That's what we're doing right now. Just doing our best.”
West Virginia's 2024 schedule begins with two rival games in the first three weeks, and the Mountaineers shouldn't need any motivation from trying to avenge last year's season-opening loss to Penn State or this season's Backyard Brawl competition in Pittsburgh.
Including the Nittany Lions, two of the four teams that beat WVU in 2023 will be in this year's game. The Mountaineers entered last season as underdogs and finished with wins in three of those games. After beating UCF as a 6.5-point favorite at home in late October, the Mountaineers were favored in four of their final five games of the season.
“We're still going with the same mindset, that we won a lot because we were the underdogs,” added standout sophomore linebacker Ben Cutter.
Burks' thinking is that West Virginia will have to figure out how to turn last year's nine wins into double-digit wins this year to take the next step in 2024. It's a simple idea, but not easy to execute, as it requires the ball to bounce in West Virginia's favor more often.
But for Burks, that doesn't mean the Mountaineers have to stray from what brought them success a year ago.
“We're just trying to take small steps. Not big steps. Just taking small steps by improving some things from last year to this year, I feel like we'll be in a great position,” he said.
Topics like expansion teams, the College Football Playoff and the NIL will dominate the conversation when all 16 Big 12 teams converge on Las Vegas on July 9 and 10. From a West Virginia perspective, one of the storylines in “Sin City” will be how the Mountaineers will replicate last year's success on the gridiron.
WVU may not have the preseason poll as motivation throughout the season, but other things are keeping this group hungry.
“To be honest with you, those 14 guys weren't our only motivation,” Cutter said, “We have a lot of kids that love the game, love to lead, love to play football, so if we keep that momentum going and keep working hard, we'll come in with the same mentality we had last year.”
