Neal Brown may be making a call to his conference's headquarters. Or they may be calling him.
Either way, Brown made it clear that he needs to gain some clarity on several critical plays — and rulings — from West Virginia's 38-31 loss to rival Pitt Thursday night in the Backyard Brawl.
"Don't ask me what targeting is and don't ask me what a catch is, because I don't know," said a frustrated Brown after the game. "And I haven't got an explanation. So don't ask me about that, because I can't talk about it. I probably know less about a catch and targeting now than I did before the game."
The catch that Brown was aggravated over was actually an incompletion. It came on West Virginia's final offensive play, when quarterback JT Daniels' pass fell just short of a sliding Reese Smith near the front of the end zone.
Smith was ruled to have caught the ball, but replay clearly showed the ball hit the ground and move. Brown, however, didn't see hit that way.
"I've got to get an understanding what that was," he said. "We had two plays — we had the ball, the last play of the game, that's going to get shown a lot, where I thought our guy's hands were under the ball. If your hands are under the ball, then my understanding is that it's a catch."
Earlier, a similar play was ruled in Pitt's favor, when tight end Gavin Bartholomew was deemed to have caught a pass as he dove to the ground.
"(The referees) wouldn't talk to me after the game, but whenever they talk to me, I'm sure it's going to get explained to me," Brown said. "Right now, I'm not sure of the difference between the two plays."
Brown was also bothered by a targeting penalty that resulted in WVU's Wesley McCormick being ejected, and a hit by Pitt's SirVocea Dennis that was reviewed for targeting but deemed not the be a penalty.
But replay seemed to blatantly reveal the differences between the two plays.
Brown can clench his fists over officiating all he'd like. The refs are employed by the Bg 12 — West Virginia's conference. Plus, the game's worst decision fell squarely on his shoulders. He, however, also doesn't see it that way.
The Mountaineers, up 31-24 at Pitt's 48, and facing a 4th and inches, elected to take a delay of game penalty and punt the ball back to the Panthers.
Kedon Slovis led Pitt 92 yards down the field to tie the game, adding on to the perceived cowardice in Brown's decision.
"You can pin them — and we did," he said. "Here it is, it's 6:01 to go, I look up at the clock. They had to go 98 yards (actually 92) and we're up by seven. If you go for it there, and you don't get it, then they've got a short field and they've got three timeouts.
"If I had to do it again, I would do that same decision."
Brown was reminded that, to that point, his team had really done a nice job in controlling the line of scrimmage on a night in which the team rushed for 190 yards. 125 of those went to freshman CJ Donaldson.
Essentially, West Virginia's coach appeared to chicken out of a situation and go against his team's biggest strength of the night, it's run game.
"We had. Yeah, we had," Brown said of the strong night on the ground. "Still though, if you look at what they've done, traditionally, they've been really, really good in short yardage situations. When you go back, and you look at it, it was three-quarters of a yard probably. And so I felt like if you take the whole scope of the game, the drive before that, we got two sacks, we got them into 3rd and forever and we played really well defensively on back-to-back drives. So I felt good about it.
"It's easy to second guess now because they went 98 yards (actually 92). I think the decision was sound. If I had to do it again, I'd do it again. It'd be different if there was three minutes to go, but there was six."
