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No one ever told Doc Holliday coaching Marshall would be easy.
After opening the season with a lopsided loss at Ohio State, the former West Virginia assistant welcomes his former boss and the 23rd-ranked Mountaineers to Huntington for the "Coal Bowl" on Friday night.
Holliday played at West Virginia for three seasons before becoming a graduate assistant in 1979. He was part of Don Nehlen's staff until 1999, serving as receivers coach, linebackers coach and eventually became associate head coach.
After stints as an assistant at North Carolina State and Florida, Holliday returned to Morgantown in 2008 when Bill Stewart succeeded Rich Rodriguez. Holliday was again associate head coach while also in charge of the tight ends and fullbacks.
In December, Holliday signed a five-year contract to lead the Thundering Herd, who opened their season with a humbling 45-7 defeat at No. 2 Ohio State last Thursday.
"It's a hell of a way to have your first game, isn't it? Against a team like that?" Holliday said. "They're No. 1 or No. 2 in America, picked by everybody, and they showed it tonight. They have a hell of a player at every position."
Marshall did little right in the game, fumbling away the opening kickoff and finishing with 199 yards while committing three turnovers. The offense failed to score any points, with the lone touchdown coming on Ahmed Shakoor's 61-yard return of a blocked field goal.
Defensively, Marshall allowed 529 yards, and Holliday knows it won't get any easier against several players he recruited to the Mountaineers.
"Noel Devine at some point is going to make some plays. He will break one here or there," Holliday said. "He is a great player and they have Jock Sanders who can beat you and Tavon Austin and Geno Smith making good decisions. They create a lot of problems for a defense, but what you have to do is get 11 guys lined up not thinking, but playing hard and running to the ball and then you have a chance."
In his first collegiate start, Smith began Saturday's 38-0 rout of Coastal Carolina slowly but played well. The sophomore quarterback finished 20 of 27 for 216 yards and two touchdowns, while Devine added 111 rushing yards and a score as the Mountaineers rolled up 400 yards of offense.
It was the defense, though, that stole the spotlight in posting its first shutout since 2005. West Virginia conceded 63 rushing yards to the Football Championship Subdivision team, a noticeable improvement by a squad that allowed six individual rushers to eclipse 100 yards last season.
"I'm pleased with the way our defense played, reacted and took control of the game," Stewart said. "The most important thing is that we played with reckless abandonment. There were collisions and not just contact."
Stewart has downplayed matching up against his protege, partially because the Mountaineers struggled to put away the Thundering Herd in last year's game with the two on the same sideline. Marshall led 7-3 at halftime before Devine had two touchdown runs around a scoring pass by Smith in West Virginia's 24-7 victory.
These teams are meeting for the fifth straight year, with West Virginia winning the previous four by a combined 141-43. The only game at Marshall in this span was a 48-23 victory in which Devine had two fourth-quarter touchdowns.
