MORGANTOWN — There were two distinct sides to Nicco Marchiol’s first collegiate start on Saturday.
West Virginia’s redshirt freshman quarterback finished 12 of 21 for 78 yards and a key touchdown in the Mountaineers’ 20-13 victory against Texas Tech.
He also led the team with 72 yards rushing, but threw two interceptions.
“Obviously it was not a good quarterback performance on my end,” Marchiol said. “It could’ve been much better. There was no excuse for some of the mistakes made out there.”
In this case, the stats don’t tell the whole story when it comes to Marchiol, who filled in for an injured Garrett Greene.
For instance, his two interceptions came in a first half when the Red Raiders (1-3, 0-1 Big 12) could not move the ball and posed little threat.
Yet they weren’t the best of decisions, either.
“He made a really bad play on the (first) interception,” WVU head coach Neal Brown said. “He held the ball forever. The guy was covered. He wasn’t open and it was a bad decision.
“I kind of told him laughing, ‘We’re wearing gold and they’re wearing white. If you see white in front of gold, don’t throw it.’ We didn’t have to make it any harder than what it is.”
The flip side to Marchiol’s night was the clutch moments, or “The gotta-have-it-plays,” in Marchiol’s own words.
That came in the second half, once Texas Tech had turned a 13-3 deficit into a 13-10 interesting ball game in the fourth quarter.
As Marchiol tells the story, WVU defensive lineman Sean Martin ran over to him after Tech’s touchdown and started giving him the business.
“He got after me a little bit, got me fired up,” Marchiol said.
This was no longer a game where Brown could ease his freshman quarterback along with conservative thinking and kid gloves.
“The game goes 13-10, and I told him, ‘Listen now, we’re going to cut this thing loose. We’re going to throw the football,’ ” Brown said. “We had to throw the football. They were loading the box.”
It’s in that instance where Marchiol thrived. Forget the earlier mistakes, the drops, the interceptions and the unimpressive stats.
In that one possession, Marchiol led WVU (3-1, 1-0) to victory by living up to his potential.
“We opened it up a little more,” said WVU tight end Kole Taylor, who caught Marchiol’s 9-yard touchdown pass that gave WVU a 20-10 lead with 7:33 remaining in the game. “He made some big plays, made a nice pass on the touchdown. All I had to do was catch it.”
On that one drive, Marchiol took a designed run 17 yards that got the Mountaineers into Texas Tech territory.
“He ran the ball well, and on that drive, that (run) was big,” Brown said.
He was also a perfect 3 for 3 passing 32 yards — Texas Tech was called for pass interference on another pass play — that was capped off with the scoring pass to Taylor.
“We ran that play about four times and it finally popped open on the touchdown,” Brown said.
“I feel I kind of perform better when there’s that kind of tension,” Marchiol added. “This is your moment. You asked for it, what are you going to do with it?”
What he did with it was take what was otherwise a subpar evening and turn it into a positive in the span of minutes.
“I’m just happy things went our way,” Marchiol said. “Guys came open. There were some amazing catches on that drive.”
