MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Neal Brown had some good news Monday on a couple of scary injuries that occurred during Saturday's 24-21 upset victory over TCU.
 
Free safety Aubrey Burks and outside linebacker Trey Lathan needed immediate medical attention on the field for the injuries they suffered against the Horned Frogs.
 
Burks was taken from the field via medial cart during the second quarter after getting hurt covering an Oliver Straw punt.
 
Lathan's injury occurred early in the fourth quarter, and he, too, required a medical cart. Both were transported to a hospital in Fort Worth for observation. Lathan's injury required surgery, which was successfully performed on Sunday.
 
"All of Aubrey's tests were negative and for what that was, he is in good spirits, and he is going to be okay," Brown said. "That was scary, but it was the best possible results. All of his tests were negative so he will go through protocol and then we will see where he is.
 
"Trey had successful surgery yesterday, and he is going to miss the year, obviously, but he is expected to make a full recovery," Brown added.
 
Brown complimented medical teams from West Virginia University and TCU for their exceptional care for both injured players.
 
"I want to praise our medical team, our trainers and our doctors, because I thought they did a tremendous job. And I want send out a huge thank you to TCU, their medical staff, their trauma team and their training staff because they were extremely helpful," Brown noted. "Their doctors handled the surgery yesterday. Aubrey and Trey, we're going to fly them back tomorrow, and we're looking forward to getting them back."

Brown said the player perhaps most affected by the two injuries was running back CJ Donaldson Jr., a high school teammate of Lathan and a close friend of Burks. Donaldson was in a similar situation last year when he was carted off the field at Texas.
 
Saturday's TCU victory completed a difficult September stretch for the Mountaineers that included physical football games against rivals Penn State and Pitt, and conference contests versus Texas Tech and TCU.
 
Starting guard Tomas Rimac turned his ankle in the Texas Tech game and reinjured it against TCU, and starting left tackle Wyatt Milum got poked in the eye against TCU. Both were unavailable in the fourth quarter when West Virginia tried to score a touchdown from the TCU 1.
 
"It was kind of unfortunate," Brown said of Milum's injury. "It happened after the play, and he wanted to play, but his eye was completely shut. If it was a boxing match, they would have stopped the fight because he couldn't see. 
 
"Tomas, it's still too early to tell. It would be a struggle if we were playing on Saturday, but because we don't, I think we will see how it goes," Brown said. "It's not going to be something that keeps him out for an extended period of time."
 
Starting spear Hershey McLaurin also watched the end of the game from the sidelines.
 
"I think he could have gone back in the game, so we'll see on him," Brown said.
 
Brown thought his starting quarterback for TCU was going to be Nicco Marchiol, but he ended up rolling his ankle during Wednesday's practice, which forced Brown to turn to Garrett Greene, who injured his ankle on the sixth play of the Pitt victory and missed the entire Texas Tech game.
 
Consequently, Brown was forced to scrap his game plan on Thursday and go in a different direction.
 
"I've been doing this a long time, offensively, and it was probably as strange of a game-plan week as we could have had last week," he said. "Up until Thursday morning, Garrett didn't do much and didn't look too good as far as movement, and I didn't want to play him until he was 100%. Then, Nicco injures his ankle, and we really don't know the extent of it until he gets up Thursday and really has a hard time walking.
 
"Nicco got every rep on Tuesday and every rep on Wednesday and the things we were preparing for him to do were quite a bit different," Brown said. "So, we kind of had to take a 180 on Thursday. Credit our guys because we did what we were supposed to do, assignment-wise, for the most part. If we would have had a full practice week, I would have been far more critical of what we did."
 
Brown said his approach to play calling changed in the second half when he saw that Greene was moving around without any major difficulty.
 
"I didn't really know what to expect with him being able to move around, but we called the game different in the second half because I could tell that he could run," Brown said. "I thought that helped us."
 
The coach admitted having no game this weekend couldn't come at a better time for his beat-up football team.
 
"We've had four physical football games, and we've got to use this time to kind of hit the refresh button both mentally and physically," he said. "We've got to take advantage of the bye week."
 
Brown gave the players and coaches Sunday and Monday off and then his 4-1 team will begin Houston game prep on Friday. He mentioned that he was happy with the way his team competed against TCU but thought there were other areas of play that could have been better.
 
"We won the game because we strained and were tough and our competitive spirit was really, really high, but we've got to make huge strides in being more disciplined and just being a smarter team," he said.

"We were able to win despite not playing really well. We were able to play at a high level on special teams. Defensively, we did some good things in the second half and offensively, we played better in the second half, but overall, we are capable of playing much, much better," he concluded.