Willie Fritz Warns Cougars of the Mountaineers Ahead of Saturday

West Virginia Mountaineers (2-6, 0-5) is on the road to take on Houston Cougars (7-1, 4-1) at TDECU Stadium on Saturday.

Houston head coach Willie Fritz met with the media on Monday for his weekly press conference on Monday and addressed the passing of Kurt Hester, University of Houston’s Director of Strength and Performance, hours prior to the team’s win over Arizona State on Saturday.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and we’re going to do some things to honor him at the game this weekend. We’ll have unbreakable on our helmet and his initials and then we’re also going to wear black because all his Unbreakable merchandise, apparel he that was using because it was very expensive in what he was going through, he always had it in black. Love coach.”

Houston moved into the top 25 for the first time since 2022 and with the success, most of the question-and-answer session remained focus on the Cougars. However, there was one question on the play of freshman quarterback Scottie Fox Jr, who produced WVU freshman records 301 passing yards on 28 completions.  

“He seems to understand what they’re doing,” Fritz said.

Although brief, he followed with “They were within a whisker of winning last week.”

Fritz noted he’s only seen the TV copy of the game last week. West Virginia was losing by an average margin of nearly 28 points per game in league action, until at home against TCU last Saturday. WVU was a defensive stop from possibility generating a game-winning drive before falling 23-17. Regardless, Fritz downplayed the Mountaineers 0-5 start in Big 12 play.

“They’ve had a tough schedule, but we’re going to have to play great,” Fritz said. “I told our guys this is a good ball club that we’re playing.”

Fritz finished the answer recognizing West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez.

“I got a lot of respect for coach Rich Rod and what he’s done at all the different places he’s been at,” he stated.

Fritz may fear his Cougars will overlook West Virginia and has seen enough tape the Mountaineers could potentially derail Houston’s chances for a Big 12 title chances. So, he’s asking fans to fill the stadium.

“I hope we can get a great crowd out there.” I always get our marketing people and our AD, they always have me do different things… every place I’ve ever been, how you draw a crowd is you win. We’ve done that part of it, and we want to continue to do that part of it and we’d love to get a big crowd out there.”

West Virginia and Houston kickoff at 12:00 p.m. EST and the action will broadcast on FS1.