Neal Brown breaks down Nicco Marchiol's decision-making in the first half

Neal Brown and the West Virginia Mountaineers have taken a 13-3 lead into halftime against the Texas Tech Red Raiders. The game has been a cold and wet affair, but the Mountaineers are one half from beating a program they haven’t picked up a win against since 2018.

As both teams headed into the half, the team at ESPN covering the game caught up to Brown to get his assessment on his quarterback Nicco Marchiol’s first-half play.

“Well, he had a bad decision on the first interception,” said Brown. “And then, he made a good, really good play. We dropped one that turned into a pick, and then he had a really nice play on the ball in the end zone that we dropped.

“So, guys got to make plays around him. But I thought he handled it. He’s handled adversity. We’re in a good position. We got to hold on to the football; we can’t turn it over. And then, they’re going to come. We’re getting their best in the second half. We’ve got to be ready.”

Brown also addressed the injury to Texas Tech’s starting quarterback, Tyler Shough.

“I hate it for him, for Tyler. He’s been hurt during his career, and it looked bad. Behren Morton got after us last year, so I’m sure they got a lot of confidence in him.”

Shough had to be carted off with injury late in the first quarter Saturday against West Virginia. Shough went down after a pass attempt on third down and was seen with a temporary cast on his left leg as he was taken back to the locker room.

Shough flashed a “Guns Up” sign as the Red Raiders crowd cheered him off. Prior to his injury, the quarterback had completed 2-of-6 passes for just three yards. Texas Tech trailed 7-3 at the time.

It’s an unfortunate occurrence as Shough has dealt with injury issues in his past two seasons in Lubbock. A broken collarbone in 2021 limited him to only four games after he transferred to Tech from Oregon. Then he again suffered an injured shoulder in the season opener of 2022 that caused him to miss six games.

On3’s Chandler Vessels contributed to this story