HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — During the past two Motor City Bowls, Bryan Leftwich was on the sidelines watching quarterback Chad Pennington lead Marshall to victories over Louisville and Brigham Young.

        Leftwich will get his chance to play Wednesday when Marshall (7-5) meets Cincinnati (7-4) in Pontiac, Mich.

        “I'm very excited because I know I'm going to play,” Leftwich said. “The last two years I knew I wasn't going to play unless Chad got hurt, and even if he did get hurt, he wasn't coming out.”

        Coach Bob Pruett feels the excitement too. He's said several times that Leftwich could end up being as good as Pennington, who finished fifth in last year's Heisman Trophy balloting and is now with the New York Jets.

        Leftwich is off to a dandy start.

        Earlier this month he broke Pennington's Mid-American Conference championship game passing record in a 19-14 win over Western Michigan, which beat Marshall 30-10 two months earlier.

        Pruett said Leftwich had matured since the first meeting with Western.

        “What's he's able to do is start throwing the ball away when he should throw it away, and he started recognizing the blitz,” Pruett said. “Western Michigan didn't do a whole lot different in the second ballgame than they did in the first. We made our fourth-down plays. He hit the blitz controls and we got two touchdowns out of it.

        “Certainly experience made a big difference in the game, and it will make a big difference next year.”

        Leftwich, a sophomore, has already shown his arm is stronger than Pennington's. That was evident at Christmas 1999 during practice for the Motor City Bowl. Leftwich stood in the corner of the end zone next to Pennington and threw high-arcing passes that seemed to pierce the stadium roof, landing across the field on the 40-yard line.

        “I threw pretty good in the 'Dome last year and the year before. I just want to see how I react in the game situation,” Leftwich said.

        He's also mirrored Pennington's ability for late comebacks. Leftwich twice threw game-winning touchdowns in the fourth quarter this season.

        As a sophomore in 1997, Pennington threw for a MAC record 3,480 yards, including a school-record 42 touchdowns, most of them to Randy Moss.

        Without a receiver of Moss' caliber, Leftwich had 21 TD passes while many more — 20 by Pruett's count — were dropped in the end zone. Leftwich threw for 3,358 yards with just nine interceptions.

        Not bad for a guy who threw just 11 passes in 1999 before an ankle injury and tonsillitis earned him a medical redshirt.

        Leftwich has yet to play a perfect game, “but he's cut down the margin of error significantly,” said Marshall quarterbacks coach Ed Zaunbrecher. “If his work habits stay the way they are and he stays healthy, he's got a chance to be really, really good.”

        Still, this year's performance wasn't good enough to earn Leftwich even an honorable mention on the all-conference team, something that infuriated his teammates.

        Leftwich doesn't care. He has two years left to earn other rewards.

        “I didn't really have a plan of what I wanted to do. I just wanted to lead my team to a championship,” he said. “And however I could do that, I wanted to do that. So I did that. I'm satisfied with that.

        “Right now, obviously, I've just got to keep working hard to get better for next year.”

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