West Virginia held their 12th spring practice on Saturday, and got an opportunity to scrimmage inside Milan Puskar Stadium with Big 12 referees and more of a game-like feel than traditional practice.
West Virginia head coach Neal Brown talked about quarterback Garrett Greene and Nicco Marchiol’s performance in the 11-on-11 portion of practice. Brown said he saw some good from both of his signal callers.
“He had three explosive runs,” Brown said of Greene. “One probably 60-plus yards and [he] threw the deep ball very well today. Two that are really fresh on my mind on go balls.”
Brown continued on Greene saying he made some errors on third down and in different situations during the live scrimmage.
“Made a couple mistakes on third down. Got to have some situational awareness, got to have some field awareness where he’s at,” Brown said. “Took a sack that he probably shouldn’t have, but some explosive plays and scrambled around and did some nice things too on some broken plays.”
Brown added both quarterbacks are alternating and getting work with the first and second team, in a battle that is going to last through fall camp.
“Nicco had two nice drives. And what I mean by that is he converted multiple third downs,” Brown said of Marchiol. “We forget he’s in his second spring, he’s a redshirt-freshman, he’s right in the middle of this thing, but he’s young.”
Brown said he felt Marchiol was able to kind of slow the game down and make the correct play instead of going for the big play.
“Today I thought he made the simple decisions,” Brown said. “I think a lot of times in football, it’s not getting yourself beat. On those two drives, especially early in practice, he just made good decisions. If it was a handoff, he handed it off, third down [gets a] completion, not taking sacks. Just did a nice job and showing some maturation there which is good to see.”
The Mountaineers will conclude their final week of practice before the annual Gold-Blue Spring Game on Saturday.
