MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — When West Virginia opposes Houston Thursday night, the Mountaineers will be up against Dana Holgorsen, the most recent WVU head coach before Neal Brown began his tenure in the 2019 season.
Holgorsen, now in his fifth season as head coach at Houston, isn’t the only Cougar with past ties to West Virginia. Four UH players were previously part of the Mountaineers’ program: Wideout Sam Brown, defensive back Noah Guzman, running back Tony Mathis Jr. and tight end Mike O’Laughlin.
Among them, Brown has made the most significant contributions at Houston and figures to garner plenty of attention from the Mountaineers’ secondary.
Brown, a sophomore from Savannah, Georgia, leads the Big 12 Conference with 518 receiving yards in what has been a breakout season to this point. His yardage is good for 22nd nationally, while Brown’s 34 receptions are 29th.
The wideout was part of Neal Brown’s first recruiting class at West Virginia, and in two seasons with the Mountaineers, Brown played nine games and caught 10 passes for 108 yards. Before the finish of the 2021 regulars season, Brown announced his intention to transfer out of WVU. That year, he played in only two games and had two receptions for 16 yards.
“Sam’s playing at an extremely high level,” Neal Brown said. “We knew when we recruited him he was going to be a really talented player. I probably just didn’t do a very good job handling him. The room he came into probably didn’t help him either. Sometimes a change of scenery works and it’s worked for him. I’m happy for him. He’s one of the leading receivers in the Big 12. I hope he continues to have a great career, just not on Thursday night.”
Brown was a heralded recruit who was labeled a 4-star by 247 Sports and originally committed to Central Florida.
While things didn’t work out for him at West Virginia, he made an immediate impact last year in his first season at Houston. Brown caught 41 passes for 471 yards and four touchdowns as one of the Cougars’ secondary options behind wideout Tank Dell, who’s now making a splash in his rookie season with the Houston Texans.
With Dell no longer around, Brown has increased his production as the No. 1 option, with fellow wideouts Joseph Manjack IV and Matthew Golden following behind him.
“This was the Tank Dell show for two years, because we didn’t have a whole lot else,” Holgorsen said. “That’s why Matt came here, because he wanted to give Tank some help so to speak. Matt’s a starting wideout and Sam Brown’s a starting wideout, and those guys are going to get plenty of targets. How much the ball finds them, some of it game-planning, but some of it is feel of the game, too. What the defenses are doing, who gets the hot hand, where the quarterback ends up looking and trusting the people to be in the right spots is who that ball is going to find. I’m glad we have both of them. The ball needs to find them a lot.”
As for how the WVU head coach’s handling of Brown during his days as a Mountaineer, Neal Brown believes a multitude of factors contributed to things not working out for either party.
During his first season in Morgantown, Sam Brown was one of 14 wideouts on the roster. T.J. Simmons was the lone senior of the group and Sean Ryan and Isaiah Esdale were the two juniors. Of the other 11 receivers including Brown, six were freshmen and five were sophomores.
“He came in during that COVID deal when you couldn’t have as much contact with guys and that was a really hard time for that class,” Neal Brown said. “Not just here at West Virginia, but across the country, that class didn’t really get to experience a summer where they were able to get into the routine of being a college student. So we weren’t around him as much and we had a lot of transition in his year-and-a-half in that room. A lot of different personalities, some up-and-down performances and it was a young group without much veteran leadership in that room.
“When I look back at it, I’ve talked about this before, anytime you lose a player and especially a talented player, you always look back and say, ‘what could I have done different?’ The thing with him is if he was in that room now, it’s a different story. We have some veterans in there. We can play better in that room, but the makeup is much better. We’d have done a better job mentoring him and having him come along.”
Last season, Brown was suspended for Houston’s Independence Bowl win over Louisiana after video surfaced of him slapping a Tulsa player in the aftermath of the Cougars’ 37-30 loss during their regular season finale.
Following the incident, Holgorsen and Houston Vice President of Athletics Chris Pezman released a joint statement.
“This type of conduct is taken very seriously, and the behavior is not reflective of our values or the standards of our program,” it read. “We are in the process of gathering more information and will take the appropriate steps moving forward.”
Sam Brown has since moved forward from the incident and the sophomore hopes to show the Mountaineers what they missed out on when the Cougars go for their first Big 12 win Thursday.
“Where we got to, at that time it was the best decision for him and probably the best decision for us,” Neal Brown said of Sam Brown’s move to transfer. “But when he left, I remember telling our staff, ‘that kid has a special talent and if he matures the way he’s capable of, he’s going to be a great player.’ Here we are a couple years later. I can’t speak on maturity. I can only speak on watching him on film and he’s playing at a really high level right now.”