By: Anthony Doria, FM88 Sports<\/p>\n
Huntington, W.V.a – The second year of the Tony Gibson era began Saturday as Marshall traveled up to State College to take on 18th-ranked Penn State to open the 2026 season. A record attendance of 108,489 fans broke the record for the highest-attendance game that Marshall has played in.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The outcome of the game will be one that Marshall will want to scrap\u00a0quickly, as they fell 45-0 to the Nittany Lions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEmbarrassing all the way around today. Offense, defense, special\u00a0teams.\u00a0Couldn’t\u00a0get anything going when we did; we had penalties early, killed\u00a0some drives.\u201d Gibson said\u00a0postgame,\u00a0\u201cWe need to obviously go back, clean\u00a0a lot of things up\u2026 we\u00a0can’t\u00a0let this beat us twice. We\u00a0have to\u00a0have\u00a0a great\u00a0week\u00a0this week and get ready for a home opener and bounce back.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Despite all the newcomers joining the\u00a0Nittany\u00a0Lions, it\u00a0didn’t\u00a0seem to matter\u00a0as they controlled the entire game. \u201cThey dictated the tempo of this football\u00a0game from snap one, and we got punched in the mouth and never\u00a0recovered,\u201d Gibson added.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Quarterback Rocco Becht, who followed new Penn State coach Matt\u00a0Campbell from Iowa State, was as good as advertised. Becht went 13\/18\u00a0with 271 passing yards and 4 touchdowns, as well as earning a 272.0\u00a0Quarterback rating.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Marshall’s offense was never able to gain\u00a0tempo\u00a0and\u00a0struggled\u00a0the entire\u00a0game. Various penalties and missed assignments hurt any momentum the\u00a0Herd seemed to get at points in the game. While they were able to get past\u00a0midfield multiple times, no drive ended in the red zone. The closest they\u00a0came was getting to Penn States 34 yd line.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Marshall did have a play that was just missed for a Touchdown. Late in the\u00a01st half, Marshall was at Penn States 39 yd line trailing 24-0, looking to get\u00a0some points going into the half. Quarterback Carlos Del Rio Wilson\u00a0extended a play, scrambling to his left, and threw a deep ball to tight end\u00a0Toby Payne in the end zone, who had a step on his defender. Despite\u00a0Payne’s diving effort, the ball was just out of his reach, and it was\u00a0incomplete. What looked\u00a0like\u00a0a big touchdown\u00a0opportunity\u00a0ended up being nothing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A couple of plays later in the same drive, Marshall had a 52 yd field goal\u00a0attempt to put them on the board going into the break. New Herd kicker\u00a0Jorge Diaz Nicholas, a transfer from Virginia, stepped up and booted the\u00a0ball through, but it\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0count as Matt Campell called a timeout to ice\u00a0the\u00a0kicker.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nicholas would then miss the 2nd kick, and Marshall remained scoreless,\u00a0as they would not be able to score the entire\u00a0game\u00a0Del Rio Wilson said\u00a0postgame it\u00a0was a game of missed opportunities. \u201cIt\u00a0was a couple of plays where we could have had a big, big bust, but there\u00a0was one block\u00a0missed, or when we did have a big bust, you know, we shot\u00a0ourselves in the foot with a penalty, offside, or a holding or something. But\u00a0other than those things, I feel like we\u00a0definitely could\u00a0have got\u00a0that offense\u00a0rolling.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Marshall’s defense did have some good moments. They were able to stop\u00a0the\u00a0Nittany\u00a0Lions multiple times, force four punts, and hold the\u00a0Nittany\u00a0Lions to only 3.6 yards per carry on the ground.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Defensive back Caleb Clark Glover said that despite the rough patches, he\u00a0did see some good signs from the defense. \u201cCoach Lambert, coach Gibby\u00a0all week, they just said, play relentless, play fast, play\u00a0hard\u00a0and run to the\u00a0ball,\u201d Glover states postgame, referring to Marshall’s new Defensive\u00a0Coordinator, Brad Lambert. \u201cI feel like the whole defense we\u00a0have,\u00a0we got\u00a0some things we got to clean up and execute more\u2026 but like for the most\u00a0part, we ran to the ball good,\u00a0pretty good\u00a0as a defense.\u201d\u00a0\u201cOnce we settled down, I feel like we got some stops. We made some good\u00a0plays\u2026 just settling down, gaining that confidence back in our defense\u00a0because we know we can play at\u00a0a high level.\u201d Glover added.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Despite the result, the herd did have some bright spots. Wilson went\u00a017-of-25 passing for\u00a0102\u00a0yards, and\u00a0led the team with 30 rushing yards.\u00a0Toby Payne caught a career-high eight passes for 55 yards, and Clark\u00a0Glover had a career-high eleven\u00a0tackles.\u00a0Highly touted\u00a0freshman\u00a0punter Cooper Heimbach had eight punts for a\u00a042.6-yard average and downed four inside the 20, which helped Marshall\u00a0get some stops.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Marshall will look for redemption as they host Middle Tennessee for the<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n home\u00a0opener of the 2026 season Saturday, September 12th at 7:00 p.m.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Anthony Doria, FM88 Sports Huntington, W.V.a – The second year of the Tony Gibson era began Saturday as Marshall traveled up to State College to take on 18th-ranked Penn State to open the 2026 season. A record attendance of 108,489 fans broke the record for the highest-attendance game that Marshall has played in.\u00a0 The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,1849,5],"tags":[124,458,100,138,1892,51],"class_list":["post-5287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-football","category-wmul-sports","tag-anthony-doria","tag-anthony-doria-wmul","tag-fm88-sports","tag-marshall-university-athletics","tag-penn-state","tag-wmul"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5287"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5290,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions\/5290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}