By John Raby
The Associated Press

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - Marshall has won four of the last five Mid-American Conference championships. The one that got away last year at Toledo has the Thundering Herd hoping to avoid another embarrassment.

Marshall (9-2) and Toledo (9-3) meet on Saturday for the fourth time since the championship game was held starting in 1997. Both teams are already committed to bowls, so the game will be mainly for bragging rights.

Toledo has beaten the Thundering Herd two straight times, winning 42-0 in the 2000 regular season and 41-36 in last year's title game in which Marshall led 23-0.

"Your wins last a week. All your losses last for a lifetime. That's just the way football is. It sticks with you," said Marshall coach Bob Pruett. "It's certainly disappointing to not win the championship because that's a team goal. But is that going to carry over to this year? I doubt it.

"What's going to carry over to this year is we're going to be playing for a championship against a good football team."

In 2001, the teams combined for 1,004 total yards. Marshall built a big lead behind Byron Leftwich, but Toledo's Chester Taylor ran for 188 yards and two touchdowns and the Rockets scored a touchdown on a fake field goal to pull out the win.

"They have what we want," said Marshall defensive back Chris Crocker. "When they took it from us last year, we had a 23-0 lead. We didn't play well enough to maintain it."

Taylor is gone, and so is Toledo quarterback Tavares Bolden. But the Rockets, predicted to finish second in the West Division this season, won their last four games to overtake Bowling Green and Northern Illinois.

Toledo's Brian Jones has completed a national-best 71 percent of his passes. He has 2,894 yards passing, 21 touchdown and just six interceptions.

Taylor has been replaced by a trio of running backs. William Bratton and freshmen Trinity Dawson and Astin Martin have combined for 1,914 yards rushing, while Jones has fared well with 382 yards on the ground.

"It was supposed to be a rebuilding year," Jones said. "Just to have an opportunity to be a part of this, it's been more than I could ask for."

Marshall won its sixth straight East Division title since rejoining the league in 1997.

Carrying the team again has been Leftwich, who was honored this week as the league's offensive player of the year for the second straight time.

Leftwich has thrown for 3,615 yards, 22 TDs and eight interceptions in just 10 games and hasn't fully recovered from a leg injury sustained on Nov. 2.

Despite being unable to move around the pocket last week, he threw for 401 yards and two TDs in a snowstorm in a 38-14 win over Ball State.

Leftwich, who still has hopes of winning the Heisman Trophy, has four 400-yard passing games this season.

"The thing that I think that sets him apart right now, in the last four weeks, he's practiced three times," Pruett said. "He practiced one-and-a-half practices last week, and he came out 35-of-42 for 401 yards. His mobility was extremely restricted.

"He's so adept at the line of scrimmage that if you blitz him, somebody's band's going to play. It's usually ours."

Marshall will play again in the GMAC Bowl on Dec. 18 in Mobile, Ala., while Toledo will make a return trip to the Motor City Bowl on Dec. 26 in Detroit.